A longtime staple of ESPN’s December lineup, the Heisman Trophy Presentation is moving to ABC.
The annual Heisman Trophy Presentation will air on ABC December 13, ESPN announced Thursday, marking the first time that the event has aired on broadcast television since NBC carried the event in 1993. The ceremony aired on ESPN for 31-straight years.
As part of the move, the show will move up an hour to 7 PM ET, sandwiched between an FCS football quarterfinal and the LA Bowl on a full day of college football on ABC.
ABC previously carried a primetime NBA game on the second Saturday in December, which as of 2023 now coincides with NBA Cup knockout stage games. Those NBA Cup games are now exclusive to Amazon in the NBA’s new media rights deal, freeing up that night for ABC to carry college football.
For ESPN, the shift marks the end of what was once a marquee night on the network’s schedule. The Heisman at one point was a strong (cable) television draw, reaching as high as six million viewers in 2009 (in an era before out-of-home viewing was tracked in Nielsen estimates). ESPN used the game’s outsized audience as a lead-in for any number of special events, from movie premieres like “3: The Dale Earnhardt Story” to the highest-profile “30 For 30” documentaries. But as Heisman viewership subsided, falling to as low as 1.6 million in 2022, Heisman night became just another on the ESPN schedule.
Last year’s Heisman viewership recovered to a five-year viewership high of 2.5 million viewers, thanks largely a star of the “Coach Prime” Colorado squad — Travis Hunter — winning the award.
With college football on ABC, ESPN will shift to a college basketball-heavy lineup that day, airing a quadrupleheader of Memphis-Louisville, Kansas-NC state, Indiana-Kentucky and Arizona-Alabama from 3:30-11:30 PM ET.
