Ratings: ‘Quantico,’ ‘NCIS: Los Angeles,’ ‘Secrets and Lies’ decimated by World Series, Dallas Cowboys

Some people working in the scheduling department at some television networks probably should be spending their Halloween explaining why they thought it was a good idea airing new episodes of some of their shows on Sunday night. After all, consider the competition for a moment. Not only did all of these networks have to contend with the presence of the World Series, but Sunday Night Football also had a Dallas Cowboys game on. The Cowboys are routinely one of the higher-rated teams, and putting them in a division rivalry game is a huge ratings vacuum.

As a matter of fact, last night’s NFL game drew a huge 6.0 rating, down only slightly from the 6.2 that the World Series had. Add to all of this “The Walking Dead” and then “Westworld” over on HBO, and it’s amazing any of these shows got numbers at all.

Granted, most of the numbers are not big, and thanks to that it’s amazing that “NCIS: Los Angeles” scored even a 1.2 in the 18-49 demographic. Just look at some of the miserable performances elsewhere on the night: “Secrets and Lies” (0.6) and “Quantico” (0.6) set series lows, “Elementary” (0.6) was terrible, and while “Madam Secretary” (0.8) and “Once Upon a Time” (0.9) were slight improvements by comparison, this is all about defining what is good. Anything below a 1.0 rating for a major network show is not something worth writing home about.

Next week will probably offer some measure of recovery. While there will still be NFL programming on NBC, it won’t be the Cowboys; also, you won’t have to worry about the World Series being on anymore. This is just one of the scariest nights we’ve seen for a major network in some time, so it’s of course ironic that it came on this particular day.

If you want some more coverage from last night’s TV lineup, you can head over here to read our full review of the “NCIS: Los Angeles” episode that came on the air.