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Home › College sports › CFB › TV Ratings: Week 8 College Football Finals on ESPN (Also: Local W.S. Ratings, Skate America)

TV Ratings: Week 8 College Football Finals on ESPN (Also: Local W.S. Ratings, Skate America)

by Jon Lewis
14 years ago
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The Southeastern Conference was the top draw on ESPN last week. In other news, ratings for Game 2 of the World Series dropped double-digits in both home markets, and NBC’s numbers for “Skate America” figure skating held steady.

  • Any Way You Slice It, SEC Leads the Way For ESPN: The SEC was the top college football draw on ESPN last Saturday. The Noon ET Louisiana State/Texas A&M game drew a 2.8 U.S. rating and 4.176 million viewers to rank as the top rated game of the week on ESPN or ESPN2. Meanwhile, Alabama/Tennessee in primetime earned a 2.5 and 4.223 million to rank as the most-viewed. Over on ESPN2, Utah/Oregon State topped the weekend with a 0.8 and 1.301 million viewers. (Saturday numbers from Son of the Bronx)
  • World Series Game 2 Down Double-Digits in Both Home Markets: Thursday’s Game 2 of the Tigers/Giants World Series drew a 36.7 rating in Detroit, down 14% from Cardinals/Tigers Game 2 on a Sunday night in 2006 (42.9). In the Bay Area, the game earned a 28.8 rating — down 21% from Rangers/Giants Game 2 in 2010 (36.4). Sacramento (24.5), St. Louis (11.1) and Las Vegas (10.3) rounded out the top five markets for the game. (Fox Sports Media Group press release [.pdf])
  • Final Ratings Flat For “Skate America” on NBC: NBC earned a 0.8 final rating for tape delayed coverage of the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating “Skate America” competition last Sunday afternoon — even with last year (0.8), but down a third from 2010, the most recent Olympic year (1.2). (Weekend numbers from Sports Business Daily)
Tags: CFB on ESPNCFB TV RatingsFigure Skating on NBCFigure Skating RatingsLocal MLB RatingsPac-12 TV RatingsSEC TV RatingsWorld Series
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Jon Lewis

Jon Lewis has been covering the sports media industry on a daily basis since 2006 as the founder and main writer of Sports Media Watch. You can contact him here or on the social media websites X (Twitter) or Bluesky.

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Sports Ratings Tracker
logoMCWS
Airing in the window that used to belong to “Sunday Night Baseball,” last weekend’s West Virginia-North Carolina Men’s College World Series game averaged 2.0 million viewers on ESPN — the third-largest audience on record for a non-final Men’s College World Series game. Read more
logoWNBA
Wednesday’s Tempo-Fever WNBA regular season game averaged 1.00 million viewers on USA Network, marking the largest audience for a WNBA game on cable or streaming this season.
logoSunday Night Baseball
The latest edition of NBC’s “Sunday Night Baseball” (Rangers-Red Sox) averaged 1.7 million viewers on NBC, per a Nielsen-measured linear audience and streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics — the least-watched of the five Nielsen-rated “Sunday Night Baseball” games this season. The previous low was 2.0 million for Padres-Mariners in May. Read more
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Last weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series race from Pocono (Pa.) averaged a 1.66 million viewers on Prime Video, per the Nielsen “Big Data + Panel” methodology that is now the official currency, and 1.63 million on using the previous ‘panel only’ methodology now being publicized by NASCAR. The 2% difference is by far the smallest for a race on Prime Video this season, after the first three races saw a “Big Data” lift of 15-21 percent. Read more
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