In a relatively ho-hum weekend for college football, Fox came out on top.
Fox’s Big Noon Saturday featuring Ohio State’s close win over Nebraska drew the top college football audience of the weekend with 5.96 million viewers. It marks the second time this season that Fox’s Big Noon has won the week in college football, and is possibly the beginning of the network’s viewership turnaround as its back-loaded schedule kicks in.
FOX’s BIG NOON SATURDAY scored the most-watched college football game of the week on any network with Ohio State’s narrow 21-17 win over Nebraska 🥇
🏈 Averaged 5,956,000 viewers on FOX
🏈 Peaked at 9,456,000 viewers on FOX pic.twitter.com/blGzaLBnKj— FOX Sports PR (@FOXSportsPR) October 29, 2024
The Buckeyes’ win increased 66% versus the audience for Oklahoma-Kansas one year ago which averaged 3.60 million viewers in the Big Noon window. Saturday’s game peaked at 9.46 million viewers during the 3:15 to 3:30 p.m. ET quarter-hour.
Fox also posted a strong viewership figure for its late-night window thanks to a World Series lead-in. Saturday night’s game between Rutgers and USC, which kicked off at 11:00 p.m. ET, averaged 2.01 million viewers, up 69% versus Fox’s late window average this season (1.19 million). The game, which began on FS1 as the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees ran late, was perhaps helped by featuring the same markets as the teams playing in the World Series.
Through nine weeks of the regular season, Fox’s Big Noon window is averaging 4.34 million viewers, down 22% versus the same point last season (5.58 million). That figure should rebound some this week with Fox set to air a top-five matchup between Ohio State and Penn State on Saturday.
ABC, who has dominated the season from a viewership perspective with its new SEC on ABC package, secured three of the top five college football audiences of the weekend. Missouri-Alabama won the mid-afternoon window with 5.7 million viewers between television and streaming. LSU-Texas A&M slotted in at 5.1 million viewers to win primetime. And the Noon game between Notre Dame and a ranked Navy team drew 2.9 million viewers, also between television and streaming.
Final @ESPNCFB Week 9 numbers are in & ABC scored 3 of the top 5 games!
🏈 @MizzouFootball–@AlabamaFTBL | 5.7M viewers
🏈 @LSUfootball–@AggieFootball | 5.1M viewers
🏈 @NDFootball–@NavyFB | 2.9M viewers pic.twitter.com/wXwtB4sN1Q— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) October 29, 2024
ABC is averaging 5.71 million viewers per game through nine weeks this season. That is up 42% from this time last season when the network was averaging 4.03 million viewers.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.