FS1 averaged 493,000 viewers for its five college football games during the opening week, led by Saturday’s Boise State-Washington game in the 10:00pm ET window with 710,000 viewers. FS1 had one game on Thursday night, one Friday night and three games on Saturday. Last season, FX aired two games on the first Saturday of the season. Those two games -- Marshall-West Virginia in the 12:00pm window and Colorado-Colorado State in the 4:00pm window -- averaged 707,000 and 422,000 viewers, respectively. By comparison, ESPNU averaged 418,000 viewers for its six games during the first week of games. The net was led by 922,000 viewers for Washington State-Auburn on Saturday night. ESPNU is in 75.6 million U.S. homes in September, while FS1 is in 89.2 million homes. Meanwhile, ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 each saw increases for their opening week of games. Among ESPN’s games during the first week, Birmingham, Ala., led all markets with a 14.5 local rating. New Orleans ranked second with a 7.7, followed by Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., with a 6.5 rating (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).
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FS1 COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAMES (OPENING WEEK)
|
|
DATE
|
GAME |
START
|
VIEWERS (000)
|
|
8/31
|
Boise State-Washington |
10:00pm
|
710
|
|
8/30
|
North Dakota State-Kansas State |
8:30pm
|
585
|
|
8/31
|
William & Mary-WVU |
12:00pm
|
493
|
|
8/31
|
Nicholls State-Oregon |
4:00pm
|
412
|
|
8/29
|
Utah State-Utah |
8:00pm
|
311
|
|
ESPNU COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAMES (OPENING WEEK)
|
|
DATE
|
GAME |
START
|
VIEWERS (000)
|
|
8/31
|
Washington State-Auburn |
7:00pm
|
922
|
|
8/30
|
FAU-Miami |
8:00pm
|
541
|
|
8/31
|
Purdue-Cincinnati |
11:58am
|
328
|
|
8/31
|
BYU-Virginia |
3:30pm
|
299
|
|
8/29
|
Rutgers-Fresno State |
10:34pm
|
234
|
|
8/29
|
Tulsa-Bowling Green |
7:00pm
|
199
|
|
|
|
|
|
LIVIN' ON A PRAYER: YAHOO SPORTS' Nick Bromberg reported several signs seen in Athens, Ga., this week that reference South Carolina DE Jadeveon Clowney were "part of a promotional campaign" for ESPN's coverage of the South Carolina-Georgia game Saturday. The signs were seen on the Georgia Theater marquee and outside Athens' First Presbyterian Church. The sign at the church read, "Dear God, How do you stop Clowney? September 7. Worship service 4:30pm." The church said that it does not "have a Saturday service scheduled for that time," which is when the game begins, and ESPN "requested the church include the time in the message." The signs are "fun," but it will "also make you think twice about the authenticity next time you see signage emanating from the site of GameDay's next show" (
SPORTS.YAHOO.com, 9/4).
