10 Most Watched Games

Sports Business Daily wrote an article about TV viewership for college football in 2010. You can read that article here. And these are my thoughts:

• Don’t feel too bad for ABC (down 10% from last year), I would imagine ESPN3.com is eating into some of those ratings which, in the end, means all the money is still going to the same place — Walt Disney’s pockets.
• NBCs Notre Dame ratings down 12.5% from last year. This is sad, and pathetic, but that might be a bigger deal than Declan Sullivan’s death in terms of Brian Kelly’s future.
• ESPN with its most watched season since 1994? Really? Was it that good? The worst part about that is that people will claim “see, the system works!” when, in reality, their ratings would have blown away 1994 IF playoff berths were on the line in the last 6 weeks.
• The CBS/SEC numbers make all the other TV station/conference deals look petty.
• Of course then you look at the NFL numbers and realize that 3x as many people watch any given NFL game on average than watch the SEC games.
• Auburn vs. Alabama was the most watched game of the season. Uh, duh.
• It surprises me that Thursday night games do better than Saturday afternoon games. I guess the primetime factor trumps the “it’s a Saturday afternoon in the Fall” factor or there are so many people at the games that ratings, in turn, plummet. Nobody’s going to games on Thursday nights unless you live in Boise or Blacksburg.
• Speaking of Boise and Virginia Tech, I can’t believe that was ESPNs most watched broadcast. Forget the fact that it should have been Boise vs. Nevada (even though it ended at 2AM EST), I can guarantee you NFL broadcast numbers don’t peak in September. I would launch into full-fledged “I hate Jim Delany” mode right now, but we dont’ have time for that.
• Bedlam combo’d with Notre Dame vs. USC for the 7th most watched broadcast of the year. Great, 8 million people probably said to themselves, “wait, is OSU playing with a secondary in the 4th quarter or did they agree before the game to just go 11 on 7?” At least they got to see the play of the year.