Cause and Effect

by srr50 on Dec 16, 2010 4:26 PM CST in Texas Longhorns and Other Football

EFFECT

The TV ratings for the regular season of college football were generally down across the board.

CAUSE

Texas
Florida
Michigan
Penn State
USC
Notre Dame

These collegiate "brand names" were all Missing In Action from the final regular season AP Top 25 Poll.

Those teams were a combined 41-32 during the regular season and none of the six even show up in the "others receiving votes," category.

ABC took a hit with their Saturday Night Game of the Week losing almost 10% of its audience from 2009. The games in the early part of the season held up well compared to last year. Texas 24-14 win over Texas Tech on Sept. 18th, was shown to 54% of the country, while Michigan State's 34-31 overtime win over Notre Dame was seen by the other 46% of the nation, and the regional broadcasts averaged 7.5 million viewers.

This years Texas-OU contest was ABC's highest-rated daytime game with just under 7 million viewers.

The Big 12 Championship game between OU and Nebraska drew 8.9 million viewers -- almost 3 million fewer than watched the Texas-Nebraska contest in 2009.

The Notre Dame Network aka as NBC saw the Fighting Irish ratings go down 12% for the season. Even CBS, with the SEC, saw its ratings drop 4.5% from 2009.

ESPN, thanks to some attractive early season games, held steady from the previous year. The highest-rated game on ESPN is also indicative of how many of the top programs were down this year. Boise State's win over Virginia Tech back on September 6th, was the most-watched game on ESPN with just under 10 million viewers. The game is the second-most viewed college football telecast ever on ESPN, behind only USC/Ohio State last September (10.586 million).

CBS was saved by fact that six of the 10 most-viewed college games for the regular season involved either Alabama or Auburn.

Auburn's thrilling come-from-behind win over Alabama was the most-watched college game of the regular season with over 12.5 million viewers.

The one network to see its audience increase was the Versus Network, but it was still the lowest rated, least-viewed college football broadcaster of the season. The cable network only averaged 400,000 for each of its 19 college football telecasts, and that's with 1.9 viewers tuning in to watch the Oregon-California matchup. The game drew the largest college football audience in Versus history.

Just like every other college football fan this off-season, network executives are as interested, if not more so to see who Mack Brown hires as his coordinators, how USC survives probation, just how much longer is JoePa going to coach, and how the Will Muschamp Era at Florida starts out.

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Comments

srr, do you have a top 10-15 ‘most watched’ or ‘biggest names’ list for football programs? Maybe it would be “BIggest Market.” I assume the 6 above would be on it.

by ut-06 on Dec 16, 2010 4:34 PM CST reply actions

BSDs of CFB TV ratings. That’s what I’m looking for.

by ut-06 on Dec 16, 2010 4:35 PM CST reply actions

What are you hearing on or ESPN deal, Steve?

by Sailor Ripley on Dec 16, 2010 4:36 PM CST reply actions

Can we create some kind of nickname or code word for Muschamp? It hurts too much to read his name. It can’t be something cool like Coach Boom. I need something that will help me get over him. Maybe something like “The Forgotten” or “Coach X”. Maybe we could do another acronym like FDCAHCIW (Former Defensive Coordinator And Head Coach In Waiting). That rolls off the tongue right? Man, this shit still stings. It doesn’t help that none of the names (and there have been many) for any and all of the positions haven’t really excited me. I mean Bostad for OL coach is pretty intriguing, but not if he’s sole OC.

Also, can we take down any pics of him? Recruitocosm still has one at the top of the main page and it feels like a punch in the stomach every time I see it.

by Michael on Dec 16, 2010 4:48 PM CST reply actions

Also, can we take down any pics of him? Recruitocosm still has one at the top of the main page and it feels like a punch in the stomach every time I see it.

Amen

by Nunna Yo Bizness on Dec 16, 2010 4:59 PM CST reply actions

UT-06:
The closest I have to any list is the markets where college football draws well — and those are dominated by medium markets where the local team will garner a huge share of the audience when they play.

Just about every list I have seen over the past few years list Birmingham right at the top (surprise, surprise). Last year’s SEC championship game with Alabama against Florida drew a 50 share in Birmingham.

Other markets that are strong college football draws are pretty obvious.
Columbus, Ohio,
Oklahoma City
Austin
Nashville
Atlanta
Jacksonville
Orlando
Knoxville

Markets near the bottom for college football
New York
Boston
Philadelphia
Los Angeles
Hartford

Sailor:
Like everything else over at Bellmont at the moment, there is little smoke from the towers.

by srr50 on Dec 16, 2010 5:03 PM CST reply actions

UT and other heritage programs move the needle.

We are Tiger Woods.

by GigoloJoe on Dec 16, 2010 5:07 PM CST reply actions

Ooooooh.
The italics poltergeist strikes again.

by LurkerintheDark on Dec 16, 2010 5:25 PM CST reply actions

Coach he-who-must-not-be-named: hwmnbn (pronounced hwum n’bun).

by LurkerintheDark on Dec 16, 2010 5:28 PM CST reply actions

Lurker -

I’ve noticed these italics comments before. Can you clarify what you’re seeing? Because my Safari doesn’t show anything wrong in the main post.

Help a brother out.

by Scipio Tex on Dec 16, 2010 5:32 PM CST reply actions

Scipio – From nunna yo bizzness on down, every comment is all in italics.

by bigdukesix on Dec 16, 2010 5:42 PM CST reply actions

test

by bigdukesix on Dec 16, 2010 5:42 PM CST reply actions

The italics are fine in Chrome and Safari (both Webkit based browsers), but I do see the issue in Firefox.

by Rex Chapman's Black Girlfriend on Dec 16, 2010 6:04 PM CST reply actions

Nunya left a tag open which I closed. Interesting how some browsers treat it and others don’t.

People, italics are for the professionals! If you don’t know what are doing, just use quote marks. Please stop before somebody gets hurt.

We’re actually working on a better commenting system…

by Sailor Ripley on Dec 16, 2010 6:18 PM CST reply actions

Normally I’ll watch the good games for most of the day on Saturdays, and sometimes multiple using ESPN3. However any game (besides the Horns’) with Matt Millen was immediately switched off.

by 2 factors on Dec 16, 2010 6:39 PM CST reply actions

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

by t1climb1 on Dec 16, 2010 6:40 PM CST reply actions

People, italics are for the professionals! If you don’t know what are doing, just use quote marks. Please stope before somebody gets hurt.

I used standard BulletinBoardCode markup language. If you’re using some super secret language for “professionals” then you might want to think about having some kind of FAQ about it somewhere on Fantake.

by Nunna Yo Bizness on Dec 16, 2010 10:51 PM CST reply actions

“Also, can we take down any pics of him? Recruitocosm still has one at the top of the main page and it feels like a punch in the stomach every time I see it.”

Settle down Frances.

html code or whatever is scary

by dick on Dec 17, 2010 12:59 AM CST reply actions

Printing went to hell when they stopped using ink.

by parlin on Dec 17, 2010 4:50 AM CST reply actions

Let’s call Muschamp “Brocktoon”.

by Felonious Monk on Dec 17, 2010 7:36 AM CST reply actions

Firefox on both win and lin working fine for me. No italics at all, everything is in englisc and fairly readable.

by Tex Long on Dec 17, 2010 8:37 AM CST reply actions

All looks good now. And I’m using Firefox, too.

by LurkerintheDark on Dec 17, 2010 10:00 AM CST reply actions

One of the three non-Auburn/Bama games in the top 9 was Boise-vt. Bham was the #1 market for that one as well. Not sure about the other 2 (Oregon-zona and OU-NU), but both followed on the heels of highly rated games involving Bama and/or Auburm.

by Dean Keeton on Dec 18, 2010 11:02 PM CST reply actions