College Football season delivers an early present to ESPN

ESPN is touting its record viewership for the college football season, with its FBS telecasts snaring nearly 200 million viewers this year for 453 exclusive regular-season games. ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPNEWS combined to top 185,687,000 viewers for 272 telecasts, averaging 1,767,000 viewers, while the 517 FBS games on WatchESPN generated 1,200,000,000 live minutes viewed, for an 80% markup over 2013.

Saturday Night Football on ABC finished the season as the most-viewed and highest-rated weekly college football night game on television, according to the company, notching 5,106,000 viewers a game and a 3.2 rating for 7% YoY increases in each category. ESPN’s Saturday night games also generated spikes, averaging 4,397,000 viewers for a 24% rise. Top five markets in 2014: Birmingham with a 9.2 rating, followed by New Orleans, Knoxville, Greenville and Memphis/Atlanta (tie).

Related Stories

Whoopi Goldberg and cast mates will take The Stand on CBS All Access Dec. 17

whoopi-goldberg

The Stand, CBS All Access’ television adaptation of the storied 1978 Stephen King novel, will debut December 17. Starring Whoopi Goldberg, Alexander Skarsgard, James Marsden, Odessa Young, Jovan Adepo and Amber Heard, the limited series unfolds around King’s apocalyptic struggle between good and evil after a plague destroys most of the country. Ben Cavell serves […]

McKinnon lands unprecedented Exotic deal

Get ready cats and kittens. Joe Exotic (working title), UCP’s limited series starring and exec-produced by Kate McKinnon, scored a straight-to-series order by both the NBCU television and streaming divisions. In an unprecedented move, project will roll out across broadcast net NBC, streamer Peacock, and a basic cable net USA. Series is based on the […]

Cat’s meow: Quaid will star in his own animal rescue story

Cat's meow: Quaid will star in his own animal rescue story

Dennis Quaid is the cat’s meow. He’s partnering with ITV America’s Leftfield Pictures for unscripted TV project Saving Dennis Quaid, which he’ll star in and exec produce. Project documents the animal lover’s recent headline-making pet rescue where he and partner Jimmy Jellinek set out on a mission to adopt a 6-year-old black cat from Lynchburg, […]

Turner Sports Shaq’s up

Big news at Turner Sports, as the company lands a multiyear extension of its partnership with Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq’s expanded role gains the Basketball Hall of Famer more airtime, including on TNT’s Inside the NBA and NBA on TNT, as well as contributions to NBA.com. He also will develop projects throughout the WarnerMedia portfolio including […]

The Tonys go digital

The Tonys go digital

The 74th Annual Tony Awards ceremony will go on, presented digitally sometime in the fall. Date and platform are TBA. The event had originally been scheduled for June 7, but was replaced by plans for a streaming special on the same date due to COVID-19. That special was postponed amid unrest over the George Floyd […]

CynCity

Cynsiders

Instagram