It was not nearly as big a draw as their previous meetings, but Alabama’s blowout of Mississippi still helped ESPN top the cable charts in week five of the college football season.
Mississippi-Alabama earned a 1.8 rating and 3.0 million viewers on ESPN Saturday night, a figure that includes streaming viewership — up 157% in ratings and 195% in viewership from Arizona-UCLA in a later timeslot last year and the top college football game of the weekend on cable.
Compared to the teams’ meeting last season, which took place in week three of the season and aired on CBS, ratings plunged 64% from 5.0 and viewership 62%* from 8.2 million. Their last meeting on ESPN, in the same late night window two years ago, had a 4.6 and 7.6 million. Those games were considerably closer, with Mississippi actually winning the 2015 game.
Earlier in the day, Vanderbilt-Florida scored a 1.8 and 2.8 million — up 29% in ratings and 34% in viewership from Notre Dame-Syracuse last year. Rounding out the Saturday slate, Mississippi State-Auburn had a 1.4 (-26%) and 2.4 million (-25%).*
Shifting to weeknight action, last Friday’s USC-Washington State game scored a 1.8 and 2.8 million on ESPN — down 10% in ratings and 19% in viewership from Stanford-Washington last year (2.0, 3.4M), which aired in an earlier timeslot. Miami-Duke had a 1.1 and 1.7 million earlier in the night.
Texas-Iowa State had a 1.0 (+11%) and 1.7 million (+16%)* last Thursday night.
On ESPN2, Colorado-UCLA topped the week five charts with a 0.6 and 1.1 million last Saturday night. ESPNU topped out at a season-high 856,000 for Troy’s upset of LSU.
Asterisk (*) indicates comparison is to TV-only audience last year.
[Wknd. numbers from ESPN, ShowBuzz Daily 10.3]
