Despite a big drop, ABC’s Saturday Night Football ruled the ratings roost in week five of the college football season.
Clemson-Virginia Tech earned a 3.0 overnight rating on ABC Saturday night, down 50% from Louisville-Clemson last year (6.0) and down 38% from Notre Dame-Clemson in 2015 (4.8).
Despite the drop, the Tigers’ win was the weekend’s top college football telecast on any network. ABC’s Saturday night series has now topped the charts in four of five weeks this season.
Earlier in the day, Florida State-Wake Forest scored a 2.1 overnight and Northwestern-Wisconsin a 2.0 — down 53% and 26% respectively from ABC’s comparable games last year, Wisconsin-Michigan (4.5) and Texas-Oklahoma State (2.7). Despite the steep declines, those games ranked fourth and fifth for the weekend among all networks.
Including a pair of ESPN games — USC-Washington State Friday night (2.2, -8%) and Vanderbilt-Florida on Saturday (2.0, +43%) — the ESPN family of networks delivered five of the weekend’s top six college football overnights.
The lone exception was Georgia-Tennessee on the SEC on CBS, which pulled a 2.6 overnight — even with the same matchup last year and down 38% from Alabama-Georgia in 2015 (4.2).
Over on FOX, Oklahoma State-Texas Tech had a 1.8 overnight in primetime and Iowa-Michigan State a 1.5 in the afternoon. Last year’s overnights were not immediately available.
[Wknd. numbers from ESPN, with additional info from Sports Business Daily 10.2]
