Ohio State Defeats Penn State In Most-Watched Week 8 College Football Game On Fox; CBS Scores A Season Best With Tennessee-Alabama

Fox is the big winner for Week 8 of College Football.

The network’s broadcast of Saturday’s Ohio State vs. Penn State matchup drew 9.96M viewers, which is Fox’s seventh most-watched regular season College Football game in history. It’s also now the third most-watched game of the season, as well as the fifth game this season to crack 9M viewers.

That was by far the most-watched game of the week, with Tennessee-Alabama coming in at No. 2 with an average of 8M viewers. Still, that’s CBS‘ top game of the season, though it is down from the viewership for last year’s matchup between the two teams.

The audience was halved for the third place game, which was Duke vs. FSU. The Seminoles’ 38-20 win brought in about 4M viewers for ABC.

Rounding out the top five were Michigan-Michigan State with 3.73M viewers, and Utah-USC with 3.23M.

The CW is also claiming a win after its telecast of the Virginia vs. North Carolina game on Saturday. The ACC football matchup averaged 788,000 viewers, making it not only the network’s most-watched ACC game to date but also the best Saturday night ever since The CW began national programming in October 2021. The game peaked around 9:45 pm ET with 1.3M viewers.

As always, several networks are not Nielsen-rated, meaning their audiences aren’t reported week-over-week. Those include the SEC Network, ACC Network, CBS Sports Network, and the Pac-12 Network. ESPN+ and Peacock are also not Nielsen-rated for live programming.

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