Update: Notre Dame defeated Penn State, 27-24, to guide its place in the national championship match.
The Irish may have what amounts to an empty field as Notre Dame and Penn State prepare to win their second national final since the Reagan administration, which was won just 18 weeks before the Gipper left in 1989. The Nittany Lions won their second cute two years later. The wire network and its numerous spinoff channels have the opportunity to reach an audience that is proportionate to the scope of yesterday’s matchup, despite the absence of any major national sports competition and broadcasters locked into winter hibernation mode.
The stakes are too high to miss the first semifinal of the 12-team College Football Playoff era, even though casual fans and explosive-offense purists may swoon early ( not for nothing did the Vegas books set the over/under at a miserly 44.5 points ). Besides, there’s not much more on TV evening, aside from the Coastal Athletic Conference men’s rings throwdown between Elon and William &, Mary, followed by a Conference USA men’s rings contest between Liberty and Sam Houston State, both on CBS Sports Network, the postseason is the only recreational function on the ring.
And have a great time finding something else to enjoy on one of the Big Four’s baskets. Fox is the only broadcaster that will be releasing first-run episodes in night, and those two hours of development for entertainment aren’t likely to take any of ESPN’s market share. Undoubtedly, you’ve seen the tune-in places for that new Denis Leary military show, as Fox has run the sprockets off the previews during its NFL protection, with one showing under its belt, Going Dutch stands as Screens lowest-rated humor.
This just get it out of the way: A near activity gets Bristol to 25 million people. The advertisers for ESPN are paying more than$ 1 million for each 30-second piece of in-game inventory because the chance to see one of these historically great programs earn a chance to emerge from the desert after nearly 40 years of wandering should pay off.
The Notre Dame-Penn State showdown has been nicely set up by last week’s quarterfinals, aside from all the redemption stories that are about to get a workout tonight in Miami. The consumption figures tell another story if the raw viewership data don’t suggest Nielsen’s ratings-gathering system will start to deteriorate as a result of the 24-hour Sugar Bowl delay, which ESPN did not intend to do, but the consumption data do. Per Inscape data, ESPN owned the airwaves last week, commanding a 10.4 % audience share. By way of comparison, the next cable network ranked ( Fox News Channel ) took fifth place with 5.8 % share.
To date, the Rose Bowl stands as the most-watched CFP telecast of the cycle, with Ohio State’s 41-21 New Year’s romp over top-seeded Oregon serving up 21.1 million viewers. Inexplicably enough, several news outlets hopped all over those Jan. 1 deliveries, which fell shy of last season’s Alabama-Michigan blockbuster. The Wolverines won the most viewers in college football in 2024 with an average of 27.7 million viewers.
But talk about an apples-to-Fiona Apple comparison, Jim Harbaugh’s squad’s big win over Nick Saban’s charges was a semifinal. About as silly as Coach Saban’s scripted interactions with the Aflac duck is trying to assess the turnout for Buckeyes-Ducks in a negative light based on the year-over-year performance.
For what it’s worth, Ohio State-Texas is no slouch either, and Friday night’s semifinal should get a bonus lift by way of elevated out-of-home deliveries. If the Longhorns can stop Will Howard from bombing them back into the Paleolithic Age, that is, if they succeed in making a close game of it, ESPN will receive yet another significant TV turnout.
Prior to the time when the national champion was decided by fiat ( Penn State received a total hose in 1995 ), relatively little attention was paid to college football’s TV deliveries. Nielsen haters typically managed to get the top household ratings for USA Today, but as of right now, those figures didn’t provide much information about how many viewers actually tuned into a given broadcast.
If there was relatively little to be gleaned from a glance at a” 15.3″ or a “16.4” set in an eye-wateringly tiny newspaper font, the ad dollars were similarly undersized—at least compared to today’s market. ESPN is poised for a respectable payday no matter which Atlanta-bound teams get on their tickets, despite the championship telecast’s last in-game units costing more than$ 2 million.
( This story has been updated with the final result. )