You know the pickings are slim when an Illinois game tops ESPN’s college football ratings.
ESPN scored a 1.2 rating and 1.9 million viewers for last Saturday’s Wisconsin-Illinois college football game, down 59% in ratings and viewership from Michigan-Michigan State last year (2.9, 4.6M) and down 48% and 45% respectively from Mississippi-Auburn in 2015 (2.3, 3.5M).
Despite the steep declines, it was the top college football game of the weekend on cable.
In other action, Michigan State-Northwestern had just a 0.7 (-68%) and 1.1 million (-69%) and Mississippi State-Texas A&M scored a 0.9 (-58%) and 1.6 million (-56%). Those games faced tough competition on FOX — Penn State-Ohio State and Game 4 of the World Series, respectively.
Finishing out a rough Saturday, USC-Arizona State had a 0.8 and 1.4 million. There was no comparable window last year.
In other action, last Friday’s Florida State-Boston College game had a 0.9 and 1.4 million on ESPN. Last year’s comparable Navy-USF game (556K) aired on ESPN2. A night earlier, Stanford-Oregon State had 1.2 million — up 5% from Cal-USC in a later slot last year (1.1M) but down 24% from Oregon-Arizona State in ’15 (1.5M).
As for the other ESPN networks, ESPN2 topped out with 645,000 for a reverse mirror of ABC’s primetime regional coverage (-58%), and ESPNU scored a healthy 601,000 for Texas-Baylor (+213%).
[Wknd. numbers via ShowBuzz Daily 10.31]
