Dewey Cox vs. Glenn Dorsey ... Cox wins!
Sorry, spent Monday night at the movies catching up on stuff I've been neglecting.
Like "Walk Hard." So there was this scene where ...
Oh, right, the BCS championship last night at the Superdome. Not so super duper ratings.
Fox, the network that carried the Ohio State-LSU game, says 52 million Americans tuned in to watch the contest that was thankfully over in these parts before the "Two And A Half Men" rerun popped up on CBS.
The 14.4 rating and 22 share that the Neilsen folks report represents about 23 million viewers. The other 30 million viewers? Musta been at bars, restaurants, dorm rooms, hotels or in attendance.
Fox's spin is that the game was 119 percent better than what NBC did (6.4/10) in the 8-to-11 p.m. EDT time slot. And it smoked ABC's "Dance War," which may have had a more competitive nature than the Buckeyes and Tigers.
So.
In truth, the 14.4 rating is 17 percent down from last year's Florida victory over Ohio State (17.4/27). In Los Angeles, it did an 11.7 rating and 19 share.
We're proud of you.
At its peak, the game did a 16.2 rating/24 share at 9 p.m. EDT, when the game was tied at 10. It fell to 13.8 at halftime and 12.4 by the time it was over.
Fox would also like you to know that "a major factor in last night’s year-to-year ratings decline was the huge difference in home market contribution between Louisiana this year and Florida last year." Florida has 7.2 million homes. Louisiana has 1.9 million. So when the game drew less-than-impressive ratings in Tampa, Miami and Orlando, well, that explains it. Even though, in New Orleans, home of LSU, it did a 52.3 rating and 66 share (that's just of monitored homes; no telling how many were on Bourbon Street crammed into a viewing party).
Columbus (51.7), Dayton (41.7), Birmingham (39.1), Cleveland (38.9), Cincinnati (29.7), Atlanta (25.6), Knoxville (23.6), Austin (21.8) and Jacksonville (21.4) were other cities of note.
Fox data also says an average viewer watched 86 minutes of the game, compared to 96 minutes a year ago.
Overall, the four BCS games on Fox averaged 9.0 rating, down 13 percent from last year.
So, in closing, you did your job as viewers. The more the ratings fall, the more the network panics, the less inclined it is to continue to spend big bucks in rights fees, causing the NCAA to reassess itself as a TV product and -- a playoff system?
Think about it while you watch this: