Saturday night's contest is the best primetime regular-season college football game for NBC on recordGETTY IMAGES
NBC averaged 9.44 million viewers for Notre Dame’s OT win over No. 1-ranked Clemson on Saturday night, marking the network’s best Irish game in 15 years and second-best audience for any college game this season to date. The sizable audience comes despite NBC having to move the game to USA Network for 30 minutes to accommodate President-elect Joe Biden’s primetime speech. The USA audience is not factored into the Irish game numbers. Clemson-Notre Dame is the best for NBC since it averaged 10.1 million viewers for USC-Notre Dame in ’05 and is the best primetime regular-season college football game on NBC on record. The top audience for this season remains CBS’ broadcast of Georgia-Alabama on Oct. 17 with 9.61 million viewers. Saturday’s game, which ran from 7:35-8:27pm ET and then 8:57-11:47pm on NBC, peaked at 14.2 million viewers from 11:30-11:45pm in the second OT. NBC is now averaging just over 5 million viewers for its four Irish games to date (excluding the USF matchup on USA on Sept. 19). That would be the best Notre Dame audience on NBC in at least the last 15 years (Austin Karp, THE DAILY).
PRAISE FOR NBC TEAM: THE ATHLETIC's John Walters writes NBC's broadcast team had a "spectacular" night, as play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico and analyst Tony Dungy "were superb" throughout the game. Late in the fourth quarter while the referees "appeared to lose the script," Tirico and Dungy were "excellent at calling out their inconsistencies while keeping an even keel themselves." At the end of the game when Notre Dame students stormed the field, Tirico was "ready with a call he must have had in his back pocket: 'In the midst of the pandemic, there is pandemonium here in South Bend'" (THEATHLETIC.com, 11/9).
DEALING WITH BREAKING NEWS: Prior to the final decision to move the game broadcast to USA so NBC could air Biden's speech, NBC Sports Group Chair Pete Bevacqua on Thursday said, "Major breaking national news is always of critical importance, and we will break in accordingly. The good news and the added benefit ... is we have MSNBC and CNBC, and now we have a 24-hour news portal through Peacock that's available.” He added, "We'll try to minimize any interruptions of these great sporting events, but it's always just a bit of a balancing act" (THEATHLETIC.com, 11/9).
