ABC Bringing Back “Saturday Night Football” For Second Year

ABC’s “Saturday Night Football” To Begin Second Season With Tennessee-California Game

ABC’s “Saturday Night Football Presented by Southwest Airlines” will return for a second season beginning with Tennessee-California on September 1. Southwest also sponsored last year’s Saturday night games. Each telecast in the 12-week series, running through December 1, will kick off at 8:00pm ET in HD. The schedule does not include games on September 8 and October 13, when ABC will air NASCAR Nextel Cup races from Richmond and Charlotte, respectively. Also, each telecast from September 29-November 24 will have game selections on a six- or 12-day basis, except for Notre Dame-UCLA on October 6. The series last year out-delivered the previous year’s programming in the time slot by 24%, averaging 5.567 million HHs and giving ABC a nightly win six times. It provided a 22% boost in HH rating (5.0 vs. 4.1), along with increases of 29% among adults 18-49 (2.7 vs. 2.1), 61% among men 18-49 (3.7 vs. 2.3) and 68% among men 18-34 (3.2 vs. 1.9) (ESPN/ABC).

NIGHT MOVES: In Cleveland, Doug Lesmerises notes seven Big Ten games will be shown in primetime on either ABC, ESPN or ESPN2, and Ohio State is the only school to be involved in three of them. Each of the three are road games, at Minnesota, Purdue and Penn State. Ohio State coach Jim Tressel and AD Gene Smith “prefer not to play home games at night,” and since home teams “are in charge of the start times, television has to take advantage when Ohio State is away” (PLAIN DEALER, 5/2). In Minneapolis, Jeff Shelman writes with Minnesota’s home games against Purdue and Ohio State airing nationally, the school will play at least three of four Big Ten home games at night. Minnesota AD Joel Maturi: “I think it’s the reality of college football. With the Big Ten Network, quite frankly, we’re going to see a lot of it in the Big Ten” (Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE, 5/2).