Overnight Talladega TV ratings drop UPDATE: ABC's broadcast of Sunday UAW-Ford 500 Nextel Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway earned an overnight Nielsen Media Research rating of 4.2, Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Daily reports. The figure is 2.3% lower than the 4.3 NBC earned overnight for the race in 2006. (SceneDaily.com) UPDATE: ABC's coverage of the Talladega race earned the largest households and viewership numbers of the 11 Nextel Cup events that have been televised so far by ABC and ESPN. With a fast national rating of 4.6, ABC's coverage was seen by 7,347,000 viewers in 5,156,000 households. The previous season high in both categories for ESPN and ABC was ABC's live telecast of the Richmond event, which had 6,804,000 viewers in 4,749,000 households. ESPN's telecast of the Indianapolis event had the highest rating of 4.9. While the household rating was only 5% lower than last year's Talladega race, ABC was up 19% in the key Males 18-34 demographic. (ESPN Communications)