Viewership for Week 4 of the 2022 college football season is in, and CBS once again led the way.
Tennessee’s win over Florida in the traditional 3:30 PM window drew 5.571 million viewers on CBS, nearly a million more than the next-best game in Week 3 and a million and a half more than the best game last week (Penn State-Auburn, also on CBS in the afternoon). Last season, Tennessee-Florida aired on ESPN in primetime and drew 3.282 million viewers. The CBS afternoon game last year was Texas A&M-Arkansas, which averaged 4.071 million viewers. The game this year aired in primetime on ESPN, and averaged 3.495 million viewers.
On ESPN’s networks, the most-watched game was ABC’s primetime window, which saw Ohio State blow out Wisconsin. 4.587 million viewers watched that one, slightly up from the 4.502 million that watched West Virginia-Oklahoma in primetime on ABC a year ago. Last week, just 2.79 million watched Michigan State-Washington in the window.
Fox’s Big Noon window drew 4.378 million viewers for Michigan’s tight win over Maryland, down from the 5.369 million that watched Notre Dame-Wisconsin last year, but up from the 3.41 million that watched Oklahoma-Nebraska last week.
Up against CBS in the afternoon window, ABC held their own with 3.458 million watching Notre Dame-North Carolina, up more than two million viewers from Ole Miss-Georgia Tech last week and also up from last year (2.806 million for Rutgers-Michigan). In the afternoon, Fox drew 2.27 million for Oregon-Washington State, down from last week (2.58 million for BYU-Oregon) and up from last year (2.012 million for Iowa State-Baylor). ESPN drew a hair more in the afternoon, with 2.277 million watching Texas-Texas Tech (up from last year, no game last week).
Fox drew 3.369 million viewers in primetime for Kansas State-Oklahoma, topping last week’s Toledo-Ohio State game (3.05 million viewers), thought it still trailed the previously mentioned primetime games on ABC and ESPN.
In the other noon games, ESPN drew 2.066 million viewers for Missouri-Auburn (down from last week, up from last year) and ABC drew 3.178 million viewers for Clemson-Wake Forest (up by over a million viewers from both last year and last week).
FS1 and ESPN2 brought up the rear, with none of the seven games airing between the two networks hitting a million viewers. The most-watched was ESPN2’s noon broadcast of Baylor-Iowa State, which drew 762,000 viewers. That was closely followed by FS1’s primetime matchup of Iowa and Rutgers, which averaged 739,000 viewers. The ESPN2 window was up from last year and down from last week, while the FS1 window was down from last year and up from last week. Additionally, the ballyhooed Duke-Kansas game on FS1 at noon averaged 441,000 viewers – the least-watched Saturday game on ESPN, ESPN2, FS1, or any of the broadcast networks.
[Data via ShowBuzz Daily, Sports Media Watch]
