This came my way via and e-mail, so I thought I’d share:
Oregon’s 37-33 win over Oregon State on Thursday drew the attention of an impressive television audience.
The game, televised nationally on ESPN, averaged a 4.2 Nielsen rating equal to 4,150,000 households and 5,727,000 total viewers, an ESPN spokesman said. Those figures trailed only the Thanksgiving night Texas-Texas A&M game for the highest-rated Thursday night football game this season (4.3 rating, 4,220,000 households and 6,691,000 total viewers).
For comparative purposes, this season ESPN’s Thursday night games averaged a 2.7 Nielsen rating, equal to 2,628,000 households and 3,533,000 total viewers.
In the Portland area, TV-watching of the game was huge.
According to ESPN, the Civil War’s 26.49 market rating in the Portland area makes it the highest-rated ESPN game on record (dating to 2001) in that market. Previously, the highest-rated ESPN game in the Portland area was Oregon State at LSU on Sept. 4, 2004, which delivered a 12.75 market rating.
In the Portland area, the game was the third highest-rated telecast of any kind this year — sports or non-sports, cable or broadcast — just behind the Super Bowl and Super Bowl Kick Off, both on NBC.
