Saturday Final Nationals: Michigan-Ohio State on ABC Registers Largest-Ever College Football TV Audience for a Noon Kickoff

ABC’s highly-rated Saturday culminated with a dominant prime time victory, courtesy of the matchup of in-state rivals Florida and Florida State on “Saturday Night Football.”

The game (and the top TV telecast) of the day took place at noon ET on ABC with the No. 3 Michigan Wolverines visiting their arch-rival No. 2 Ohio State Buckeyes in Columbus, Ohio. The TV audience of the double-overtime win by Ohio State was 16.647 million viewers — the top college football game of this season to-date, the most watched college football regular season noon ET kickoff across all networks on record and ABC’s second most-viewed game out of 791 game windows, dating back to 1991.

Also, the viewership for the Ohio State victory ranks among the top 5 most-watched regular season games across all networks – which includes conference championship games – on record.

For ABC, it is the most-watched game in more than 10 years when the network aired the 2006 Michigan-Ohio State game which remains the most-watched regular season game the network has ever televised (21,037,000 viewers). At the time of that game, Michigan ranked No. 2 and Ohio State No. 1 in the country and it kicked off at 3:30 p.m. ET.

​ESPN’s stream garnered 279,000 viewers in the average minute with a total of 1,273,000 unique viewers watching 69,661,000 minutes, ESPN’s most-streamed regular season college football game ever in all three metrics.

Michigan-Ohio State becomes ESPN’s first regular season game to surpass one million unique users and 60 million minutes watched. The impressive average minute audience is the third for ESPN to surpass an average minute audience of 200,000 viewers for a college football game, joining this season’s Ole Miss at Florida State (231,000 viewers) and Louisville at Clemson (200,000 viewers).

Additional Wolverine-Buckeye Highlights:

· Significant Audience Growth: The total live audience was up 55 percent from last year’s Ohio State at Michigan game (November 28, 2015 at noon on ABC) which earned a total live audience of 10,948,000 viewers.

· Peak Audience: ABC’s audience peaked at 20,262,000 viewers as the Buckeyes-Wolverines battled in overtime (3:30 p.m. – 4 p.m.).

· Local Markets: Columbus was the No. 1 market with 43.6 local rating, followed by Dayton (36.8) and Detroit (30.8). The local rating in Detroit is second highest ever for a regular season college football game on any ESPN network.

(Source: ESPN)

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* AFF = Number of affiliates (stations) airing the program
* CVG = percent of coverage in U.S.
	Saturday, November 26, 2016
	PROGRAM	AFF*	CVG* (PCT)	HH/Share	Viewers (000)	Adults 18-34	Adults 18-49	Adults 25-54
8-11	Network Average			3.6/7	6580		2.0/7	2.3/7
8:00	Saturday Night Football Pre-Game (s)			2.8/5	4972	1.1/6	1.3/5	1.6/5
8:06	Saturday Night Football Florida @ Florida State (thru 11:48)	247	94	3.6/7	6437	1.7/8	2.0/7	2.3/7
	PROGRAM	AFF*	CVG* (PCT)	HH/Share	Viewers (000)	Adults 18-34	Adults 18-49	Adults 25-54
8-11	Network Average			1.6/3	2638	0.4/2	0.6/2	0.8/2
8:00	Robbie the Reindeer (rs)	255	94	1.3/2	2291	0.4/2	0.6/2	0.7/2
9:00	The Story of Santa Claus (rs)	255	94	1.3/2	2231	0.3/2	0.6/2	0.7/2
10:00	48 Hours	255	94	2.2/4	3393	0.4/2	0.6/2	0.8/3
	PROGRAM	AFF*	CVG* (PCT)	HH/Share	Viewers (000)	Adults 18-34	Adults 18-49	Adults 25-54
8-11	Network Average			1.8/3	2878	0.3/2	0.5/2	0.7/2
8:00	National Dog Show (r)	244	94	1.9/4	3227	0.4/2	0.6/2	0.8/2
10:00	Saturday Night Live (r)	244	94	1.4/3	2180	0.3/1	0.5/2	0.6/2
	PROGRAM	AFF*	CVG* (PCT)	HH/Share	Viewers (000)	Adults 18-34	Adults 18-49	Adults 25-54
8-11	Network Average			1.7/3	3120		0.9/3	1.1/3
7:35	College Football Utah @ Colorado (thru 11:12)	251	94	1.7/3	3060	0.8/4	0.9/3	1.0/3
	PROGRAM			HH/Share	Viewers (000)	Adults 18-34	Adults 18-49	Adults 25-54
8-11	Network Average			0.4/1	785		0.2/1
7:00	Muere Fidel Castro (s)			0.7/1	1169		0.4/2
8:00	Gran Estreno: For Greater Glory Cristiado (2012) (thru 11:00)			0.4/1	785		0.2/1
	PROGRAM			HH/Share	Viewers (000)	Adults 18-34	Adults 18-49	Adults 25-54
8-11	Network Average			0.3/1	621		0.2/1
7:00	Cine Caballero a la Medida			0.4/1	960		0.3/1
9:00	Velvet (thru 11:00)			0.2/0	420		0.1/0

Sub-Demo Breakdowns – Saturday 11/26/16

For the entire week of November 21-27, 2016 in Total Day (8 p.m. to 5:59 a.m.), Adult Swim is up +1 percent in viewership (0.898 million vs. 0.889 million) and down -0.2 percent among Adults 18-49 (531,000 vs. 532,000) from one week earlier; the network is also down -10 percent in total viewership (0.898 million vs. 0.997 million) and down -13 percent among Adults 18-49 (531,000 vs. 612,000) from the same week one year ago (November 23-29, 2015). (https://programmingins.wpengine.com/?p=13093)

	PROGRAM	HH	Viewers (000)	A18-49 rating
9:00	Bob’s Burgers (r)	0.57	909	0.33
9:30	Bob’s Burgers (r)	0.61	992	0.43
10:00	American Dad (r)	0.61	973	0.40
10:30	American Dad (r)	0.70	1113	0.47
11:00	Family Guy (r)		1353	0.62
11:30	Family Guy (r)		1493	0.69

TOONAMI – SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2016

	PROGRAM	Viewers (000)	A1849 rating	A1849 (000)
12:00a	Dragon Ball Z Kai	1205	0.54	692
12:30a	JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure	856	0.40	510
1:00a	Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans	772	0.35	448
1:30a	Hunter X Hunter	714	0.34	432
2:00a	Naruto: Shippuden	685	0.32	405
2:30a	One Piece	607	0.28	353
3:00a	One Punch Man (r)	609	0.29	372

	PROGRAM	Viewers (000)	A1849 rating
3:30a	Bob’s Burgers (r)	584	0.27
4:00a	Bob’s Burgers (r)	661	0.30
4:30a	American Dad (r)	702	0.32
5:00a	American Dad (r)	779	0.36
5:30a	King of the Hill (r)	789	0.35

Source: Live+Same Day data, Nielsen Media Research