ESPN rode its college football coverage to a big cable ratings win last week in both primetime and total day.
The sports network averaged 3.1 million viewers in primetime during the week of September 4-10 to end Fox News Channel’s win streak on the chart at 10, according to Nielsen figures supplied by Fox News. ESPN was led by its September 9 Texas-Alabama college football telecast, which generated 7.9 million viewers.
Fox News finished a distant second with 1.5 million viewers, followed by MSNBC with 1 million viewers. HGTV was fourth with 903,000 viewers, while Hallmark Channel pulled into fifth place with 711,000 watchers.
TLC was sixth with 638,000 viewers, followed by INSP (623,000 viewers), USA Network (613,000), CNN (586,000) and History (551,000).
ESPN’s 1.1 million viewers on a total-day basis barely beat Fox News’s 1 million viewers, stopping the news network’s streak of 35 straight wins in the category. MSNBC (732,000 viewers), CNN (473,000) and HGTV (462,000) rounded out the most wretched networks on a 24-hour basis.
