The Cowboys' 31-26 victory over Washington on Thanksgiving allowed them to extend their NFL-best record to 10-1 and pumped life into the league's moribund television news this season.
With network television ratings and viewership down across the board this season, the Cowboys-Redskins turned in the most-watched regular-season game on Fox since the network got into the NFL broadcasting business in 1994.
The game attracted 35.109 million viewers.
It was the most-watched Thanksgiving game since the last time the Cowboys went to the Super Bowl. The 1995 Cowboys-Kansas City Chiefs game on NBC pulled in 35.716 million viewers. The Cowboys, won 24-12. Later that season, the Troy Aikman quarterbacked Cowboys topped the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XXX, 27-16.
Aikman and Joe Buck called the late Thursday afternoon Cowboys-Redskins game for Fox.
Meanwhile the Detroit Lions' 16-13 victory over the Minnesota Vikings averaged 27.6 million viewers for CBS.
