Football on TV
The TV numbers for the wildcard round of the playoffs were down. Only the Saints-Panthers last weekend out drew Monday’s national championship, which was up 10 percent from the previous year and delivered a 15.6 ratings and more than 28 million viewers.
Side note: Here are a couple of interesting TV tidbits from Monday night’s Alabama win over Georgia. It was the third-most watched cable program ever, behind the Oregon-THE Ohio State title game in 2015 and the Alabama-THE Ohio State Sugar Bowl. Side note to the side note: For all those folks claiming conspiracy theories that the college football committee picked Alabama over THE Ohio State for the ratings, well, it’s clear that if they were looking for the most eyeballs, the conspiracy would have been to pick THE Ohio State.
In a year in which sports across almost all cable platforms dropped, the impressive numbers of the college football playoff as a whole was pretty impressive. The three games averaged 26.3 million viewers, which is an increase of 18 percent from last year and almost 30 percent from January 2016.
And while the numbers for the forgettable bowls with mockable names dropped, the complete New Year’s Six bowl package averaged 17 million viewers, which was up 6 percent from last year, according to sportsmediawatch.com