The Colorado Buffaloes have fallen on hard times both on the field and in the ratings.
Friday’s Colorado-Washington State college football game was easily the least-watched Buffaloes game of the season with just 727,000 viewers on FS1, a considerable decline from the previous low of 2.77 million for their loss to Oregon State two weeks earlier.
After the first five Colorado games this season averaged 8.50 million viewers, the subsequent four on Nielsen-rated television have averaged 2.84 million — a two-thirds decline. The Buffaloes were 3-2 after the first five games and have since gone 1-5.
Overall, Colorado will finish the season averaging 6.04 million viewers on Nielsen-rated television. The team’s season finale against Utah is on Pac-12 Network, which is not rated.
In other sports action Friday, ESPN averaged 1.37 million for Kings-Spurs and 1.30 million for Suns-Jazz in an NBA In-Season Tournament doubleheader — both up considerably from the comparable night last year, when the network carried a solo Timberwolves-Grizzlies game (913K).
NBA games are now averaging 1.78 million viewers across ESPN and TNT this season, up 4% from the same point of last season (1.72M).
Rounding out the Friday sportscasts, USF-UTSA college football averaged 429,000 viewers on ESPN2 and Butler-Michigan State led the college basketball slate with 281,000 on FS1.
Friday, November 17 sports viewership
