With FOX owning the day’s two biggest sporting events, ABC college football ratings were less-than-spectacular last weekend.
Regional college football action featuring either Georgia Tech-Clemson or Texas Tech-Oklahoma earned a 2.0 rating and 3.46 million viewers on ABC’s Saturday Night Football last weekend — down 38% in ratings and 36% in viewership from Clemson-Florida State last year (3.2, 5.4M) and down 44% and 42% respectively from Notre Dame-Temple in 2015 (3.6, 6.0M).
The telecast, which had 3.6 million with streaming viewership included, tied ABC’s lowest primetime rating of the season. Utah-USC had the same 2.0 rating two weeks ago, and an even smaller audience (3.2M).
It was also ABC’s least-watched college football telecast opposite the World Series since 2011 (3.45M).
Despite the weak numbers, Saturday Night Football delivered the largest college football audience of the weekend outside of the blockbuster Penn State-Ohio State game on FOX (9.9M).
Airing directly opposite PSU-OSU, regional action featuring TCU-Iowa State or UCLA-Washington had a 1.8 (-18%) and 2.9 million (-19%). It also had to contend with Georgia-Florida on CBS (2.0, 3.38M).
ABC’s best performance came earlier in the day, as Oklahoma State-West Virginia scored a 2.2 (+12%) and 3.37 million (+15%) in the Noon ET window. That game faced no notable competition.
