NEW YORK (AP) — Television viewers flocked to the showdown between LSU and Alabama over the weekend,
making it the top-rated regular season college football game in eight years.
The Nielsen company said 16.6 million people watched the game late Saturday afternoon, as LSU held off
the Tide’s late charge. At 7 p.m. Eastern, just before its conclusion, the audience topped 20 million
people.
Similarly, the 6.7 million people who watched Minnesota beat Penn State earlier in the day was a winner
for ABC. It was the network’s biggest audience for a noon college football game in three years. It was
particularly appealing to Minnesota fans; the rating for the game was the highest in Minneapolis of any
college game since at least 2000, when the market ratings became available, Nielsen said.
A different form of combat helped ABC’s "The View" this week. The shout fest that ensued when
Donald Trump Jr. came on the show to promote his new book gave the show its biggest audience in six
months when former Vice President Joe Biden appeared.
Behind the dominant force of "Sunday Night Football," NBC won the week in prime-time, averaging
7.1 million viewers. Fox averaged 6.7 million, CBS had 5.8 million, ABC had 4.3 million, Telemundo had
1.27 million, ION Television had 1.25 million, Univision had 1.2 million and the CW had 720,000.
ESPN was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 3.06 million viewers in prime time. Fox News
Channel had 2.59 million, MSNBC had 1.89 million, Hallmark had 1.54 million and History had 1.01
million.
ABC’s "World News Tonight" topped the evening newscasts with an average of 9 million viewers.
NBC’s "Nightly News" was second with 8.2 million and the "CBS Evening News" had 5.7
million viewers.
For the week of Nov. 4-11, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NFL Football: Minnesota at
Dallas, NBC, 22.99 million; "NFL Sunday Night Pre-Kick," NBC, 16.72 million; "NFL Sunday
Post-Game," Fox, 15.71 million; NFL Football: Dallas at N.Y. Giants, ESPN, 14.72 million; NFL
Football: L.A. Chargers at Oakland, Fox, 13.85 million; "NCIS," CBS, 10.89 million;
"Little Mermaid Live," ABC, 9 million; "Football Night in America, Part 3," NBC,
8.89 million; "Young Sheldon," CBS, 8.84 million; "FBI," CBS, 8.55 million.
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ABC and ESPN are owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner
Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox is owned by Fox Corp. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp.
ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.
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Online:
http://www.nielsen.com