• by Wayne Friedman , January 9, 2009

Fox got a 16% improvement for its BCS Championship game Thursday between Oklahoma and Florida over 2008. A relatively entertaining and close game throughout, with Florida winning 24-14, pulled in a Nielsen preliminary 26.8 million viewers--3.7 million more than last year's LSU-Ohio State results, which earned 23.1 million viewers.

Still, it was behind the 2007 and 2006 games, which grabbed 28.8 million and 35.6 million viewers. The 2006 game--Texas beating USC--pulled the all-time-high viewing results, as well as household rating, which earned a 21.7 rating/35 share.

All this gave Fox an easy overall victory on Thursday night. Among 18-49 viewers, the night earned an 8.4 rating/21 share. ABC followed at a distant second place with less than half of Fox's totals, pulling a 3.6/9. NBC was in third place, at 2.2/6; CBS came in fourth at 2.2/5; Univision was fifth at 1.6/4 and CW was sixth at 0.8/2.

Networks did not shy away from the strong mostly-male competition, as some of the more women-friendly programs showed good results.

New episodes of ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" and "Private Practice" (in its new night and time period, at 10 p.m. after "Grey") took in a respective 5.2/12 and 3.4/8 numbers among 18-49 viewers. "Practice" won its time period, while "Grey" came in at second place at 9 p.m. ABC's "Ugly Betty", earlier in the evening, grabbed a 2.4/6.

NBC also took a shot with originals on the night with "My Name is Earl" earning a 2.0/6 at 8 p.m., while "ER" snagged a 2.6/7 at 10 p.m.

CBS sat on the sidelines with repeats for all its usual Thursday shows. The best results came from "CSI" with a 2.7/6.