There is no better bellwether than this year’s BCS National Championship between Oklahoma and Florida. Last night’s FedEx BCS National Championship received a 15.8 rating, up 16% from last year’s game.

In the metered markets, Oklahoma City had the highest local rating, with 51.7% of the Sooners’ home DMA tuning into the game. Five local Florida markets also made the top ten, led by Jacksonville with a 40.2 local rating.

Top 10 Local Markets HH Rating 1/8/09
BCS National Championship

Market	HH Rating
Oklahoma City	51.7
Tulsa	46.9
Birmingham	41.6
Jacksonville	40.2
Tampa-St. Pete (Sarasota)	32.3
Orlando-Daytona Bch-Melbrn	30.6
Austin	29.9
West Palm Beach-Ft. Pierce	29.5
Ft. Myers-Naples	28.2
Source: 2009 The Nielsen Company

Viewership for the other four BCS bowls was also up compared to last year. The Fiesta Bowl between Ohio State and Texas was up 40%, the Sugar Bowl was up 14%, and viewership for the Rose Bowl increased 8%.

Outside the BCS, the positive trend continued with 17 of 27 bowls outperforming last year’s ratings.  Most notable were four bowl games airing on ESPN that boasted triple-digit increases in viewership:

• The Humanitarian Bowl between Maryland and Nevada was seen by 3 million viewers, a whopping 218% increase over last year’s game.
• The Hawaii Bowl was proof that Notre Dame still can still deliver a large audience (and a victory),  in front of 4.4 million viewers up 119% over last year’s game.
• The Poinsettia Bowl on Dec.23  and the GMAC Bowl on Jan. 6 showed that there is demand for Bowls well before and after New Year’s, sporting 115% and 113% increases in viewers, respectively.

Below is a full recap of national viewers for this year’s bowl games.

The NHL is hoping old acquaintances will provide an unforgettable New Year’s Day in its second annual Winter Classic. The Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks – two of the original six hockey teams – will drop the puck outdoors at historic Wrigley Field- home to baseball’s Chicago Cubs.

Last year’s inaugural outdoor game provided a memorable tableaux, with Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby carving through the Buffalo snow to score the winning goal in an overtime shootout in front of the NHL’s largest regular season television audience since Wayne Gretzky’s retirement in 1999.

If the NHL hopes to top last year’s Winter Classic, it certainly has the conditions in its favor. The Red Wings won the Stanley Cup last year in a series that was the leagues highest-rated in five years. This season, the Red Wings average a 3.5 local household rating in Detroit (aka “Hockeytown, USA”) - third among all NHL clubs.

The Blackhawks, meanwhile, are more than doubling their average audience in Chicago over last season with an average 1.2 household rating and 43,000 household viewers.  They’re also leading the league in attendance, thanks in part to their nine-game winning streak riding into Wrigley. And with the forecast calling for a 30% chance of snow in the Windy City Thursday, the scene may well be as visually pleasing as last year’s Classic.

The programming window for the NHL’s Winter Classic is helped in part by the Bowl Championship Series’s decision within the last decade to move three bowl games off New Year’s Day. The National Championship Game, as it has since 2007, airs a full week after the first of the year, with this year’s contest between the Florida Gators and the Oklahoma Sooners kicking off January 8 on FOX.

Nevertheless, college football continues to dominate New Year’s Day television with a slate of bowl games across four networks.  Last year’s Rose Bowl on ABC was seen by over 19 million viewers, tops for any program on New Year’s Day.  The top 6 most-viewed sports programs of New Year’s Day were all bowl games, followed by the Winter Classic.

Meanwhile, ABC’s Saturday Night Football had its own share of ratings success with six of the top seven rated contests this season. The network averaged 8.2 million viewers and a 5.0 household rating for its eleven primetime broadcasts in 2008, up 29% over last year.

The top ten rated games were also dominated by BIG 12 Conference matchups, with seven of the top nine broadcasts this year. Notably, the annual Red River Rivalry between Texas and Oklahoma was the ninth highest rated broadcast of the 2008 season, despite its early 12PM ET start time.

Local Ratings
An analysis of local markets reveals that the University of Alabama had the highest local ratings of any BCS team in a metered market. On average, 40.1% of the Birmingham market tuned in to Crimson Tide games this year, for an average local audience of 296,000 households.

Up north, Columbus, OH upheld its reputation as one of the most sports-obsessed U.S. cities, with an impressive 32.1% of the market – or an average of 295,000 households – tuning in to Ohio State Buckeye games.

The top-ranked Oklahoma Sooners pulled a booming 32.1% of the Oklahoma City market, good for 220,000 households.

**University located within Diary Market; nearest Metered Market substituted.
Click here for the 56 Metered Markets and Universe Estimates

Heisman Trophy Preview
One of sports’ most storied trophies will be awarded on Saturday at Manhattan’s Downtown Athletic Club. The Heisman finalists are a trio of QB’s- Florida’s Tim Tebow, Texas’ Colt McCoy, and Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford – who starred in front of large television audiences this season, including six of the highest rated national games in 2008. Tebow will attempt to repeat last year’s victory, and become only the second player in history to win two Heisman trophies. Last year’s broadcast on ESPN was watched by 4.3 million viewers, the most for the ceremony this decade.

College Football: Quartet Of Upsets
Oregon State’s stunning upset of top ranked USC was only the harbinger of what was to come in a wild weekend of college football upsets. 

Oregon State’s victory last Thursday night drew 6.3 Million TV viewers, the largest audience for ESPN’s Thursday Night College Football this season.  The next day, the University of Michigan overcame a 19-point deficit to beat the (then) undefeated Wisconsin Badgers in front of 1.3 million ESPN viewers.

Meanwhile, the Southeastern Conference lived up to its billing as the most competitive in the nation, delivering two thrilling upsets in one night: Ole Miss topped the Florida Gators by one point, followed by the Alabama Crimson Tide’s defeat of the Georgia Bulldogs — watched by 6.7 million ESPN viewers. 

A ranking of this season’s most watched college football games, to date, is below.

Goodbye, Shea Stadium
Mets fans who hoped Shea Stadium would receive an October farewell were denied on the final day of this year’s baseball season — for the second consecutive year.  806,000 New York viewers, the largest audience for the Mets this season, watched Shea’s sad ending on Sunday.  Next year, the Mets will move next door, to Citi Field.

Chicago: Double Baseball Trouble
Neither New York team made it to the playoffs this year, but for the first time in more than a century, both Chicago teams are in the post-season.  The White Sox’ defeat of the Detroit Tigers drew 451,000 Chicago viewers.  The next day, the Sox’ tie-breaker victory over the Minnesota Twins nearly doubled its Chicago TV audience — to 750,000 viewers — setting a new record in the process.