College Football TV Ratings: FOX, CBS score big viewership in Week 11
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On an interesting day in the Big Ten, FOX and CBS emerged as TV ratings winners in Week 11 of college football. FOX was in Happy Valley for Indiana at Penn State while CBS headed to Iowa City for Oregon at Iowa.
Both games delivered and wound up coming down to the final play. The two networks drew huge viewership numbers for their respective matchups.
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FOX led the noon ET window as Indiana fought off Penn State with a late charge. The Hoosiers’ thrilling victory over the Nittany Lions averaged 6.03 million viewers, the network announced. It also peaked at 11.1 million, according to analyst Michael Mulvihill, as Omar Cooper made the highlight-reel catch that helped seal IU’s victory to stay undefeated.
In the 3:30 p.m. ET slot, Oregon also had to fight off an upset. The Ducks faced tough conditions at Kinnick Stadium against Iowa, but eventually came away with the win in front of 5.4 million viewers on average, CBS announced. That made it the network’s second-most watched game of the season so far.
The Hawkeyes took a late lead on a Mark Gronowski rushing touchdown, but missed the two-point conversion. That left enough time for Dante Moore to lead Oregon down the field and for Atticus Sappington to hit the game-winning field goal as time expired, meaning the Ducks avoided the road upset and improved to 8-1 on the year.
Data for ESPN and ABC was not available as of the time of publication. Those figures are expected Wednesday.
It marked another big week for FOX, which led the early window for the second straight week. The network’s success comes as ABC and ESPN are both unavailable for YouTube TV and its roughly 10 million subscribers due to a carriage dispute. At more than 6 million viewers, Indiana’s win over Penn State sits just outside the Top 25 most-watched games of the season, according to college football TV ratings data compiled by On3.
Those channels, along with all other Disney networks, went dark late Oct. 30 and were still blacked out as of Tuesday night. That meant college football fans lost two Saturdays of ABC and ESPN college football games, as well as two Monday Night Football games, due to the dispute.
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