• Overnight and Streaming Audience Grows Significantly Year Over Year

ESPN’s Thursday night telecast featuring No. 5 Louisville at Houston (8 p.m. ET) earned a 1.8 overnight rating on TV and a streaming  average minute audience of 77,000 viewers and a total of 354,000 unique viewers watching 17,100,000 minutes. The overnight for the Cougars’ 36-10 victory is the most-watched Thursday college football game of the season across all networks and up 260% from last season’s week 12 Thursday night game (East Carolina at Central Florida). The streaming audience was the highest ever, in all three metrics, for a Thursday game which aired on ESPN and was up 541%, 372%, and 565%, respectively, in average minute audience, unique viewers and total minutes watched from the previously mentioned the Pirates-Knights game.

Locally, Louisville set the pace among with a 15.4 rating. The complete top 10 local markets:

College Football Week 12 Continues on ESPN’s Networks

Oklahoma at West Virginia on ABC’s Saturday Night Football Highlights College Football Playoff Impact Games
ABC’s Saturday Night Football Presented by Walmart features No. 11 Oklahoma at No. 16 West Virginia (8 p.m. ET) on Saturday, Nov. 19 in one of the many games with College Football Playoff implications on ESPN’s networks in week 12. The Sooners are unbeaten in conference play and remain in the CFP hunt, while the Mountaineers with just one conference loss look to climb atop the conference standings.  Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit and Samantha Ponder will be in Morgantown, W.V. for the call of the game from Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium.

No. 5 Ohio State at Michigan State (noon on ESPN), No. 7 Wisconsin at Purdue (noon on ABC), and Indiana at No. 3 Michigan (3:30 p.m. on ESPN) are three Big Ten matchups that all have College Football Playoff and conference championship implications.  Joe Tessitore, Todd Blackledge and Holly Rowe will be in East Lansing, Mich. for the Buckeyes-Spartans game, while Mike Patrick, Ed Cunningham, Dr. Jerry Punch will be in West Lafayette, Ind. for the Badgers-Boilermakers matchup and Dave Pasch, Greg McElroy, Tom Luginbill in Ann Arbor, Mich. for the Hoosiers-Wolverines tilt.  ESPN3 will also offer Sky Cam and Command Center viewing options for the Ohio State-Michigan State game.

In primetime, No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Clemson will both be in action as the Crimson Tide finishes their non-conference schedule by hosting Chattanooga (7 p.m. on ESPN2) and the Tigers complete their ACC schedule by going to Wake Forest (7 p.m. on ESPN).

Complete week 12 schedule is here

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Media contact: Derek Volner at 860-384-9986; [email protected] and @DerekVolner