Awful Announcing
The only higher-viewed regular-season game ever on ESPN was Lakers-Rockets in 2003, the first game between Shaquille O'Neal and Yao Ming.
ESPN's initial MegaCast audience this year was 25,588,000 viewers, 308,000 ahead of last year's.
This window was up 17 percent from last year's eighth doubleheader (Steelers-Saints on Dec. 23), and The NFL on CBS is up two percent on the year overall.
There are plenty of interesting elements in the regular-season viewership totals for the top 15 teams in the CFP rankings.
The average of 32.538 million viewers for Bills-Cowboys was the best regular-season rating on any network in three years and the most-watched Thanksgiving Day game on CBS in 27 years.
Big Noon Kickoff averaged 1,979,000 viewers for its 11 a.m ET-noon hour Saturday. College GameDay averaged 2,725,000 viewers for its final hour, but 2,125,000 across its three hours, so Fox's peak is at least getting close to ESPN's average. And few would have predicted that when Big Noon Kickoff launched.
Cowboys-Patriots aired nationally on Fox, with only limited competition in some markets from Jaguars-Titans on CBS. That, plus the strong ratings draws involved and the possible playoff implications, helped lead to a massive 19.5 metered market rating.
The MLS Cup was previously held in December on Saturdays without much sports competition. But moving it up a month meant that it had to shift to Sunday to not conflict with ESPN college football coverage, and that saw it go head-to-head with the NFL.
As per ESPN, F1 audiences are up 19 percent year over year and 24 percent over the NBC average from 2017.
ESPN New York's The Michael Kay Show handily beat WFAN's Mike's On with Mike Francesa for the first month of the autumn ratings book, even with WFAN streaming counted.
Williamson is out six to eight weeks, which is not great for the Pelicans' upcoming lineup of national TV appearances.
The average audience of 411,000 viewers for Combate Americas beat broadcasts from Bellator, ONE Championship, and the PFL.
"Incomplete data provides inaccurate information" is quite a stance to take on a tweet that was correct at the time.
CBS is now off to its best NFL start since 2016.
Smackdown's Fox debut averaged 3.87 million viewers and a 1.4 in the adults 18-49 demographic.
