NEW YORK – Television viewers are ready for some football.
Three college football season openers scored among the Nielsen company’s four most-watched television programs last week. Only an episode of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” broke through.
The most popular game was ABC’s Saturday night telecast in which Georgia, ranked fifth at the time, beat Clemson, No. 3 at the time, in the Duke’s Mayo Classic in Charlotte, North Carolina. The other popular matchups paired Notre Dame and Florida State this past Sunday night and Ohio State and Minnesota last Thursday night.
It’s all a warmup act for pro football: The NFL starts its 2021 season this week and promises to dominate live television viewing.
Since it showed two of the three noted games, ABC was the week’s most-watched network in prime time, with an average of 4.4 million viewers. CBS had 2.6 million, NBC had 2.53 million, Fox had 2.49 million, Univision had 1.5 million, Ion Television had 1.1 million and Telemundo had 1 million.