• by Wayne Friedman , 3 hours ago

Along with the NFL, college football TV viewing has also made a slight gain -- 2% more -- to average 1.83 million viewers for the first eleven weeks of the season, according to Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel.

Networks include ABC, Big Ten Network, CBS, the CW, ESPN networks, Fox Television Network and Fox Sports networks, NBC and TNT.

Analysts say the new Nielsen Big Data + Panel appears to be helping TV results for a lot of national TV content. It combines some 40,000 household panel results with data from cable, satellite set-top boxes and smart TVs across 45 million households and 75 million devices.

Nielsen touts that it was used as currency during the most recent summer TV upfront ad-selling period. 

Total national TV advertising revenue among top seven college TV networks from September 1-November 18 inched up 3% to $859.9 million (up from $836.0 million) over the same period, according to EDO Ad EnGage.

Individual national TV college football networks so far this season include Fox Television Network ($215.4 million), ABC ($192 million), CBS ($153.13 million), ESPN ($148.4 million), NBC ($74.3 million), ESPN2 ($5.12 million) and Fox Sports 1 ($25.4 million).

The most-watched college teams, according to Nielsen, include: Alabama (7.87 million), Tennessee (7.03 million), Georgia (7.00 million), Texas (6.48 million) and LSU (6.42 million).

The next five include Oklahoma (6.1 million), Ohio State (5.75 million), Florida (5.67 million), Florida State (4.92 million) and Mississippi (4.65 million).

Through the first two months of the NFL season, NFL regular-season games across all networks were up around 3% to 18.5 million average viewers.