Not having games on January 1 this year hurt a bit in overall drop in TV ratings, but many other games were down this year as well:

From link below:

Viewership During '11-12 College Bowl Season Down 15% From Last Year

By Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor

Published January 13, 2012
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The ’11-12 college bowl season averaged 5.2 million viewers for 34 telecasts across Fox, CBS, ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, down 15% from 6.1 million viewers last year. Figures for the TicketCity Bowl are excluded from both years as the game aired on ESPNU, which does not report ratings on a game-by-game basis. While viewership for the five BCS games on ESPN was down 16%, ESPN and ESPN2 averaged 3.4 million viewers for 25 non-BCS games, down 9.2% from 3.7 million viewers last year.

http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily...tings.aspx

I didn't see a single bowl game this year. So I helped kill the ratings. It is my fault. I lost all interest after the year UCF just had.

Here's the TV ratings for 2011-2012:

http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily...rship.aspx


Here's the TV ratings for 2010-2011: (and prior years as well)
http://www.bcsfootball.org/news/story?id=4819384

For ESPN, even when ratings DROP, they are still very profitable...as even the worst bowl games this year brought in a 1.2 TV rating (for a LIVE PROGRAM, i.e. most viewers watch it and the commercials LIVE), which is still attractive for many advertisers.

Here's how this year's bowl games did as compared to last year:

I figure the increased competition wanting in on the income generated by college football will change things in the near future. Although it's my hope that in the long run bowls are relegated to the secondary role of determing conference superiority, while the superior teams do the same in some form of playoff...

As happy as I was with our attendance showing, I'm disappointed with the TV ratings of the LB. Really, if we can't do any better than the pathetic Fight Hunger match-up...

Maybe the ESPN smear campaign had its desired effect...

Beef....

I was surprised as well at the numbers for the Liberty Bowl.....especially when the stadium had 57K there watching. With the crowd there it "looked" and "felt" bigger than the actually tv ratings. Odd how that works...

A lot depends on the date, what day and time it falls upon and what competition does it have for tv viewers

The Belk Bowl numbers were up...glad to see The Ville along with NC State did it part.

I could give a about the Orange Bowl ratings. The folks that missed that game missed history being made. It's their problem. Not mine...

UCLA-Illinois was a 43% increase? Who played in last year's game?

The game itself is a huge factor. SMU was up 21-0 after the first quarter against Pitt. I'm sure a lot of people tuned out at that point. The same goes for the WVU-Clemson game, a blowout at halftime.

(01-14-2012 10:05 AM)BJUnklFkr Wrote:  As happy as I was with our attendance showing, I'm disappointed with the TV ratings of the LB. Really, if we can't do any better than the pathetic Fight Hunger match-up...

While this year's Liberty Bowl BCS (Cinci) vs BCS (Vandy) Game on ABC had a bit more scoring than last year's 10-6 slugfest on ESPN between CUSA (UCF) vs BCS (Georgia), last year's game covered much larger TV Markets and schools, which sometimes (not always) can play a roll in generating TV ratings.

(01-14-2012 10:42 AM)cinbinsportsfan Wrote:  UCLA-Illinois was a 43% increase? Who played in last year's game?

This year's Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl was played on New Year's Eve...while last year's game was stuck on January 9th, 2011 (Nevada vs Boston College).

Change in date, plus 2 BCS teams probably helped that game's TV ratings soar.