Prime Time

Deion, Marshall and Shannon. Three players often referred to by their first names, and soon to be known as Hall of Famers. Deion Sanders, Marshall Faulk and Shannon Sharpe will be inducted into the Pro Football shrine Saturday night. Sanders and Faulk were slam dunks in their first year of eligibility. Joining that trio will be Richard Dent, Chris Hanburger, Les Richter and Ed Sabol. Sanders was one of football's most versatile and entertaining players, earning the nickname "Prime Time.

A sports series is the most-watched prime-time show for an entire television season for the first time. The NFL said Thursday that "Sunday Night Football" averaged the most viewers for the 2011-12 season. The games on NBC averaged 20.9 million viewers during the official TV season to beat out "American Idol," which drew a smaller audience than last year.

NEW YORK - It is the police procedural that has network executives scratching their heads this season: The Case of the Disappearing Viewers. Across the television landscape, network and cable, public television and pay cable, English-language and Spanish, viewing for all sorts of prime time programming is down this spring - chiefly among the most important audience for the business, younger adults. In the four television weeks starting March 19, NBC lost an average of 59,000 viewers (about 3 percent)

Wayfair is an online retailing giant with a big problem. Even though it sells 4.5 million products, from bird baths to baby strollers, nobody knows its name. Over the past decade, the Boston company started 200 websites — each its own niche, with names like RackandStands.com and JustVanities.com. Now Wayfair is trying to break out of obscurity and build a brand, one its founders hope could one day be as well known as rivals Amazon.com and eBay.com. "There are very few retailers who do $500 million in sales [that]

FOXBOROUGH -- Forgive Ellis Hobbs for not losing any sleep over a certain visitor scheduled to perform at Gillette Stadium Thursday night. Randy Moss may have a flair for the dramatic that is made for prime time television and the type of ability that makes defensive backs quiver in their cleats, but Hobbs doesn't have time to fret. "I got so much on my plate -- taking nothing away from him -- but I'm a rookie and I have a whole lot of other things to worry about, too," the Patriots' first-year reserve cornerback said before practice yesterday.

The Eagles will appear on Sunday Night and Monday Night Football a total of four times in 2012. They will also meet Cincinnati on Thursday Night Football on Dec. 13. Their schedule, released by the NFL on Tuesday, features Sunday prime time games against the New York Giants on Sept. 30, and the Dallas Cowboys on Dec. 2. The Eagles also will play Monday prime time contests at New Orleans (Nov. 5) and against Carolina (Nov. 26). "It looks to be another competitive slate of games this year and we're hard at work now going through the process of getting ready for training...

Some weeks NBC must wish it could start prime time a couple of hours earlier. The network's "Nightly News" broadcast with Brian Williams averaged 9.1 million viewers over five days last week, clearly outdistancing rivals at ABC and CBS. The problem for NBC is that it also beats virtually everything the network shows in prime time. Take away Sunday night football and its preview shows and the most-watched NBC show last week was "Law & Order: SVU," with 7.3 million viewers. "Harry's Law" had 7.2 million, Nielsen said.

Fox was the champ in prime-time ratings last week, with CBS close behind, as the two networks seized almost exclusive control of the Top 30 roster. Fox was supercharged with three editions of "American Idol" (which took the first, third and fourth slots for the week), along with its Daytona 500 NASCAR coverage. CBS, as usual, was powered by its slate of dramas, sitcoms and reality shows, claiming 21 of the Top 30 rankings (including "NCIS," which placed second for the week overall)

By Shalise Manza Young, Globe Staff In its infinite quest to make everything league-related into a major event, the NFL has finally, and to great fanfare, released the 2012 regular season schedule. We've known for some time which teams the Patriots would be facing, but now we know when and in what order they'll be facing those 13 opponents. Some analysis/highlights: * The Pats are currently scheduled to play four prime-time games. Remember that could change with late-season flex scheduling,...

Andrew Cosenza is a town clown who wants to make it big. For about a decade, the 28-year-old Shrewsbury resident has appeared on public access television channels throughout Boston's western suburbs as the host of "The AC Show," a half-hour comedy program that mixes the marijuana-fueled routines of "Cheech and Chong" and the slacker sensibility of "Wayne's World" with nonsensical public antics. "I've always tried to be the jokester out of my family, always the comedian trying to make anyone laugh," said Cosenza, who has been making amateur...

Andrew Cosenza is a town clown who wants to make it big. For about a decade, the 28-year-old Shrewsbury resident has appeared on public access television channels throughout Boston's western suburbs as the host of "The AC Show," a half-hour comedy program that mixes the marijuana-fueled routines of "Cheech and Chong" and the slacker sensibility of "Wayne's World" with nonsensical public antics. "I've always tried to be the jokester out of my family, always the comedian trying to make anyone laugh," said Cosenza, who has been making amateur movies since childhood.

Fans can watch every Olympic event live online NEW YORK (AP) — Usain Bolt could be defending his Olympic 200-meter title on a Thursday afternoon in the United States. Fans will be able to watch the race live online for the first time during this summer's London Games, but what they'll see is very different from the tape-delayed, prime-time package that will still air a few hours later. NBC executives decided to shift from their longtime philosophy and make every event available as it happens, convinced that the plan will build interest in the Olympics and not siphon off viewership from the...

The springtime slumber is continuing for television networks. Viewership is down across the broadcast networks, with the primary culprit most likely the different ways people are experiencing television. DVRs, video on demand, streaming of material on tablets or other computers are all options that viewers are turning to in bigger numbers, according to researchers. "It's not like people are leaving the living room," said Brad Adgate, research analyst at Horizon Media. "It's just that they are consuming content on different devices.

NEW YORK - It is the police procedural that has network executives scratching their heads this season: The Case of the Disappearing Viewers. Across the television landscape, network and cable, public television and pay cable, English-language and Spanish, viewing for all sorts of prime time programming is down this spring - chiefly among the most important audience for the business, younger adults. In the four television weeks starting March 19, NBC lost an average of 59,000 viewers (about 3 percent)

The Super Bowl-champion New York Giants will play five primetime games and face seven playoff teams this season. Three of the primetime games will be played in the first four weeks of the season with two being midweek contests, including the season opener on Sept 5, a Wednesday night meeting the Dallas Cowboys. The NFL also has the Giants facing the Panthers on a Thursday night in the third week of the season and playing the Philadelphia Eagles 10 days later in a Sunday night contest.

The Eagles will appear on Sunday Night and Monday Night Football a total of four times in 2012. They will also meet Cincinnati on Thursday Night Football on Dec. 13. Their schedule, released by the NFL on Tuesday, features Sunday prime time games against the New York Giants on Sept. 30, and the Dallas Cowboys on Dec. 2. The Eagles also will play Monday prime time contests at New Orleans (Nov. 5) and against Carolina (Nov. 26). "It looks to be another competitive slate of games this year and we're hard at work now going through the process of getting...

Despite the slow, seemingly bottomless decline of NBC's prime-time lineup over the past decade, the network's other programming remained unaffected. Now there are signs that that is changing. NBC's "Today" show, "Tonight" show, "Nightly News" and "Meet the Press" have long led their time slots on broadcast television. Each is seeing rivals chip away at that supremacy and although different factors are at play, there are worries that prime-time problems also play a role. "Performing this poorly in prime time year after year does have an impact on other (parts of the day)

LONDON -- A bevy of British actors, most sporting American accents, are being yanked across the pond and into US prime time this fall. "Everybody's going!" exclaims Sophia Myles as she waited, bags packed, for her work visa to arrive. The British beauty's movie credits include Isolde in the historical romance "Tristan & Isolde" and the upcoming sci-fi action film "Outlander. " But now she's reporter Beth Turner in "Moonlight," the vampire-themed crime series, premiering on CBS Sept.

The Patriots have long known their opponents for the 2012 regular season, but on Tuesday the NFL released its full schedule, and they found out when they'd be meeting their 13 opponents. New England opens the season in Tennessee Sept. 9 at 1 p.m. That game will feature the league's only active set of twins: the Patriots' Devin McCourty and the Titans' Jason McCourty. They attended Rutgers together, so the game at LP Field will be the first time they've been on opposing sidelines.

In its infinite quest to make everything league-related into a major event, the NFL has finally, and to great fanfare, released the 2012 regular season schedule. We've known for some time which teams the Patriots would be facing, but now we know when and in what order they'll be facing those 13 opponents. Some analysis/highlights: * The Pats are currently scheduled to play four prime-time games. Remember that could change with late-season flex scheduling, but no team can play more than five regular-season prime-time games, so only one more could be added.