(02-16-2016 10:23 PM)bullet Wrote: (02-16-2016 09:28 PM)goofus Wrote: While all those fancy graphics are very colorful, the data presented does not make much sense. Since they don't do a good job of spelling out what is being measured and how it was measured, it makes all the data seem inconsistent and much like gibberish.
The Big ten had an average viewership of 8.5M ? What does that even mean? It can't possibly mean average of all games they had on tv. Maybe it means total viewership for all games during a week, averaged for all weeks. But they don't really spell it out.
That whole article is badly written dressed up with fancy graphics.
Yeh, I don't buy it. Notre Dame is lower than the ACC and Big 12 averages? That's a pretty hard sell. And Big 10 being first isn't consistent with the ratings I saw this season. Is it just talking about bowl viewership? That maybe I could believe.
It's actually very consistent and it has nothing to do with the bowls. These are numbers that are DIRECT from Nielsen, so it's also not the product of a "biased" Big Ten blogger (regardless of the fact that he posted them).
If you don't want to believe the aggregate numbers, look at Sports Media Watch complete listing of nationally televised college football TV ratings from this past season:
http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-...v-ratings/
The Big Ten had 6 conference games that got over a 4.0 rating. It also had 3 non-conference games over a 4.0 rating. There were also 2 other Big Ten conference games that got just under that number at a 3.9 rating.
The only other conference that was comparable was the SEC, which also had 6 conference games that got over a 4.0 rating. It also had 1 non-conference game (the Wisconsin-Alabama Big Ten-SEC matchup) with over a 4.0.
None of the other conferences were even close. For games over 4.0, the ACC had 2 conference games and 2 non-conference games (against Ohio State/Big Ten and Notre Dame). Notre Dame had 2 games (against Clemson and Pac-12/Stanford). The Pac-12 had zero conference games and 2 non-conference games (against Michigan State/Big Ten and Notre Dame). The Big 12 technically had 1 conference game with over a 4.0, but it was actually a split ABC window with the Big Ten where there the Big Ten game actually was in most of the country (so the Big 12 got the benefit of a Big Ten game propping its stat here).
So, of the 4 of the 10 conference game windows with a 4.0 or higher rating were Big Ten games and 3 of the 5 non-conference games that achieved that level involved Big Ten teams. (The other 2 non-conference games involved Notre Dame playing top 10 teams.) We're not even counting the 2 games that were right under at 3.9, which were the 2 highest-rated games outside of that group.
The Nielsen figures posted are right in line with this data - the Big Ten and SEC are substantially ahead of everyone else with a very clear line of demarcation after those two leagues. This has been the case EVERY single year that Nielsen has released this report. I have a lot of critiques of how the Big Ten is run at times, but it is every bit as much of a TV monster as the SEC when it comes to college football. I know a lot of people don't want to believe it because they don't want to believe that members of their own conferences would jump to the Big Ten ASAP if they were invited and/or don't want to believe that the Big Ten is going to break all records with its new TV contracts and/or want to believe that Big Ten expansion didn't work. The data has been completely clear and consistent that all of those people are wrong and in denial about the Big Ten's power compared to everyone outside of the SEC (and this is not just an outlier season - this data has been consistent for YEARS).
EDIT: I missed the Stanford-ND game as also getting over 4.0, so I corrected the numbers accordingly.
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2015 CFB Season TV Ratings: B1G with Top Ratings
![[Image: Nielsen-6.jpg?resize=303%2C218]](http://i1.wp.com/footballscoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Nielsen-6.jpg?resize=303%2C218)
![[Image: Nielsen-7.jpg]](http://i0.wp.com/footballscoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Nielsen-7.jpg)
