• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Rose Bowl draws record U.S. TV audience

Posted on: Thursday, 5 January 2006, 20:12 CST

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A record 35.6 million TV viewers tuned in to see the University of Texas narrowly defeat the University of Southern California in the Rose Bowl college football championship, Nielsen Media Research reported on Thursday.

The down-to-the-wire 41-38 Texas Longhorn victory on Wednesday night over the USC Trojans was the most watched college bowl game in at least 15 years, going back to 1991, the start of Nielsen's electronic database.

The game also produced the highest ratings among viewers aged 18 to 49 -- the demographic most prized by advertisers -- of any bowl game on record, Nielsen said.

Compared with last year's national championship college football game, USC's 2005 Orange Bowl victory over Oklahoma University, the Texas-USC matchup at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena drew 14.2 million more viewers and 73 percent higher ratings among adults 18-49.

This year's Rose Bowl also compared favorably to other high-profile sporting events, yielding higher numbers than any World Series baseball championship game since 2001. And it was the most-watched football game -- college or professional -- during the past 15 years on ABC, which through this season was home of the weekly marquee Monday Night Football broadcast.

ABC is a unit of the Walt Disney Co.

Reuters/VNU

Source: REUTERS

More News in this Category