ESPN Gets Bowled Over in January

By Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 2/6/2012 12:01:00 AM

ESPN rode its annual collegefootball bowl coverage to basic cable’s first monthly primetime ratings win of 2012.

The sports network dropped 5% of its audience compared with last year, but its 3.7 million average primetime viewers 2-plus bested USA Network’s 2.6 million watchers, which were down 6% compared with January 2011.

Disney Channel took third place with 2.5 million viewers, down 7% from last year, while History grew 21% to 2.2 million and TBS posted a 26% increase to 2 million viewers to fill in the top five most watched networks for the month.

TNT (2 million viewers, down 6%); Fox News Channel (1.9 million viewers, up 6%); A&E Network (1.8 million, up 2%); FX (1.3 million, down 20%); and Nick at Nite (969,000, down 41%) rounded out the top 10.

On a 24-hour basis, Nickelodeon topped all basic-cable networks, despite a 23% viewership falloff from January 2011. The network averaged 1.9 million viewers last month to top Disney Channel’s 1.7 million viewers, which was down 3%. ESPN (1.4 million, down 7%); USA Network (1.3 million, down 4%); and Adult Swim (1.2 million viewers, down 1%) all finished in the top five networks for the month.

ESPN’s collegefootball coverage dominated the most-watched shows for January, with live game coverage or live studio pre- and post-game telecasts representing nine of the 10 most-watched shows in January. ESPN’s Jan. 9 BCS National Championship game between LSU and Alabama topped all shows for the month, with 24 million viewers.

Several networks posted stellar January performances, led by Planet Green, which posted a whopping 82% year-to-year gain (to 166,000 viewers). Other networks garnering big audience increases included GMC (155,000 viewers, up 70%); Discovery Fit & Health (121,000, up 57%); NBA TV (205,000, up 55%); Sprout (183,000 viewers, up 49%); DIY Network (136,000, up 43%); Nat Geo Wild (162,000, up 40%); VH1 (799,000, up 39%); IFC (184,000, up 36%); NFL Network (205,000, up 35%); and CNN (842,000, up 25%).

Other networks that didn’t fare so well in January include Hallmark Movie Channel (215,000, down 27%); Hallmark Channel (672,000, down 27%); MTV (1.1 million, down 27%); Mun2 (74,000, down 26%); The Weather Channel (234,000, down 25%) and Oxygen (410,000, down 25%).