Final Ratings: ESPN Sees Audience Gains For First Two Games Of College Bowl Season

ESPN earned a 1.8 U.S. rating and 2.6 million viewers for the first bowl game of the season last Saturday from 12:56-4:42pm ET, as Arizona rallied to beat Nevada in the Gildan New Mexico Bowl. That figure is up 20% and 17%, respectively, from a 1.5 rating and 2.2 million viewers for the Temple-Wyoming matchup last year. However, the Arizona-Nevada rating is flat compared to the BYU-UTEP matchup in ’10, while viewership was down 8%. Meanwhile, ESPN earned a 1.9 rating and 2.8 million viewers for last Saturday’s Utah State-Toledo Famous Idaho Potato Bowl from 4:42-8:03pm, up 12% and 17%, respectively, from a 1.7 rating and 2.4 million viewers for the Ohio-Utah State matchup last year. However, while Utah State-Toledo’s rating was up 6% compared to the Northern Illinois-Fresno State game in ’10, viewership was down 3% (Austin Karp, THE DAILY).

ROCKET MEN: In Houston, David Barron noted ESPN’s Celtics-Rockets game last Friday “drew a bigger audience than Comcast SportsNet Houston’s broadcast of the same game.” As a “national broadcast generally siphons off a good portion of the local audience,” the CSN Houston audience was particularly affected as net remains available to “only 40 percent of the market.” CSN Houston earned a 0.97 local rating, compared to a 1.56 rating on ESPN. The combined rating made the matchup the “most-watched Rockets’ game of the year” (CHRON.com, 12/17).

The charts below list final Nielsen ratings from recent sports telecasts. Figures for Fox were unavailable at presstime.