On a packed college football weekend, FOX took silver and bronze in the ratings.
Last Saturday’s Nebraska-Ohio State college football game drew a 3.1 rating and 5.01 million viewers on FOX, up 63% in ratings and 61% in viewership from Penn State-Michigan State last year (1.9, 3.10M). There was no comparable window in 2016.
The Buckeyes’ win ranked second for the weekend among college football games, trailing only Alabama-LSU on CBS in primetime (6.6, 11.54M).
For the season, it ranks third among games on FOX behind Texas-Oklahoma (3.5, 5.61M) and Michigan-Michigan State (3.4, 5.42M) last month. The top three games on FOX this season have aired in the Noon ET window, and those same three rank as the top Noon games on any network.
Later in the day, West Virginia-Texas drew a 2.7 and 4.43 million — up 108% in ratings and 123% in viewership from Stanford-Washington State last year, which was largely preempted (1.3, 1.99M), and up 200% and 225% respectively from 2016 (TCU-Baylor: 0.9, 1.37M).
The Mountaineers’ win ranked third for the weekend, topping both Penn State-Michigan on ESPN (2.5, 4.25M) and Georgia-Kentucky on CBS (2.6, 4.39M) head-to-head.
Rounding out the FOX slate, UCLA-Oregon had a 1.2 (-29%) and 1.95 million (-32%).
Over on FS1, no game last weekend cracked the 500,000 viewer mark. All four of the network’s games declined, with ratings and viewership topping out at a 0.31 (-11%) and 487,000 (-10%) for Oklahoma State-Baylor.
The full list of week ten college football ratings is available here.
[Numbers from Nielsen via Sports Business Daily 11.7]
