ESPN drew a 7.2 overnight rating for the Auburn-Alabama game on Saturday night, a figure tied with the Ohio State-USC game in ’09 as the net’s best on record for a regular-season college football game. The Iron Bowl, which aired on ESPN for the first time since '07, drew a 51.8 local rating in Birmingham, marking ESPN’s best figure on record in the market for a regular-season CFB game. Last season, CBS drew an 8.6 overnight for the Iron Bowl, which aired in the 3:30pm ET window and had a dramatic finish, while ESPN drew a 3.6 overnight for Texas A&M-Missouri in the Saturday primetime window. The Michigan-Ohio State matchup on ABC in the 12:00pm ET Saturday window was the second-best figure of Week 14, drawing a 5.5 overnight. That is down 14% compared to the same game in the same window last year (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).
|
OVERNIGHT RATINGS FOR SELECT CFB WINDOWS ON THANKSGIVING WEEKEND
|
| '14 TELECAST |
DATE
|
NET
|
TIME (ET)
|
RAT.
|
'13 TELECAST |
RAT.
|
| Auburn-Alabama |
11/29
|
ESPN
|
7:45-11:45pm
|
7.2
|
Texas A&M-Missouri |
3.6
|
| Michigan-Ohio State |
11/29
|
ABC
|
12:00-3:45pm
|
5.5
|
Ohio State-Michigan |
6.4
|
| Florida-Florida State |
11/29
|
ESPN
|
3:30-7:15pm
|
4.1
|
Penn State-Wisconsin |
1.1
|
| Mississippi State-Ole Miss |
11/29
|
CBS
|
3:30-7:00pm
|
3.3
|
Alabama-Auburn |
8.6
|
| Arkansas-Missouri |
11/28
|
CBS
|
2:30-6:00pm
|
2.6
|
Arkansas-LSU |
2.8
|
| Stanford-UCLA |
11/28
|
ABC
|
3:45-6:45pm
|
2.3
|
Miami-Pitt |
1.4
|
| (regional) |
11/29
|
ABC
|
3:45-7:15pm
|
2.3
|
Georgia-Georgia Tech |
2.3
|
| Nebraska-Iowa |
11/28
|
ABC
|
12:00-3:45pm
|
2.2
|
Iowa-Nebraska |
2.3
|
| Oregon-Oregon State |
11/29
|
ABC
|
8:00-11:45pm
|
2.2
|
UCLA-USC |
2.6
|
| Virginia-Virginia Tech |
11/28
|
ESPN
|
8:00pm-12:00am
|
1.7
|
USF-UCF |
1.0
|
| Arizona State-Arizona |
11/28
|
Fox
|
3:30-7:00pm
|
1.6
|
Washington State-Washington |
1.3
|
| Notre Dame-USC |
11/29
|
Fox
|
3:45-7:00pm
|
1.5
|
Notre Dame-Stanford |
2.2
|
| South Carolina-Clemson |
11/29
|
ESPN
|
12:00-3:30pm
|
1.4
|
Florida State-Florida |
2.3
|
| LSU-Texas A&M |
11/27
|
ESPN
|
7:30-11:00pm
|
1.3
|
Ole Miss-Mississippi State |
0.8
|
| Grambling-Southern |
11/29
|
NBC
|
2:30-6:00pm
|
0.7
|
Grambling-Southern |
0.5
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME: CBSSPORTS.com's Jon Solomon wrote for years, "many leaders within college football warned that creating a playoff would hurt the regular season." Many people "didn't really believe the rhetoric, but it was the company line nonetheless." Today, many conference commissioners and TV execs say that viewership for this regular season "essentially feels like any other year, only with heightened interest." Through the first 12 weeks of the season, college football TV ratings were up 7% on ABC and down 11% on ESPN. Through the first 13 weeks, ratings for SEC games on CBS were down 5%, and ratings were up 7% on Fox and up 39% on FS1. Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said, "Not only has the regular season not been weakened, I think the months of October and November have gotten even better than they were before." Across the country, TV execs and commissioners believe that there is "more buzz with a playoff," but "very few of them see a correlation between the playoff and TV ratings." SEC Exec Associate Commissioner Mark Womack said the playoff has not had a significant impact on ratings, "but it certainly has not been a negative impact." Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said that "there's a connection between the playoff and what he calls 'very strong' viewership for Pac-12 games." Scott: "Frankly, as I expected, the playoff is taking college football to even another level in terms of popularity and interest given the fact there's more teams that have a chance to make it to the postseason. There's more storylines, more intrigue, and more at stake for more schools" (
CBSSPORTS.com, 11/28).
IRONING IT OUT: SEC Network's Paul Finebaum hosted a call-in show during ESPN's broadcast of Saturday's Iron Bowl, and SI.com's Richard Deitsch wrote there is "little downside for such additive programming during big events." Saturday's format was "helped immensely by a back-and-forth game and a ton of scoring." Finebaum in an e-mail wrote that he "thought the show went very well" and that the "highlight of his night" was when play-by-play man Brent Musburger called in during halftime. Finebaum wrote that he would be "interested in doing something similar again and it’s a good idea as a potential Megacast component if an SEC team makes the playoffs." Finebaum: "Early in the third quarter, the phone system melted down. ... Our guess is we had so many calls at once the system simply blew up again. The engineers worked feverishly to fix the problem. About the moment Alabama took the lead, the phones came back" (SI.com, 11/30).
TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES: DEADSPIN's Timothy Burke noted fans who tuned into SEC Network on Saturday for the kickoff of Tennessee-Vanderbilt "were instead greeted by an eerily silent" Dick Stockton, who was "calling a different game on an entirely different network." How Stockton, who was calling Kansas-Kansas State on FS1, "ended up on SEC Network is a mystery." For the Tennessee-Vanderbilt game, fans "missed the opening kickoff and the first play" (DEADSPIN.com, 11/29).
