’Bama won the game — and the ratings

Still, numbers were down, likely due to Crimson Tide’s huge lead early in playoff.

Alabama’s 45-34 victory over Oklahoma in a College Football Playoff semifinal was the week’s mostwatched prime-time program, averaging 18.49 million viewers, a 10.5% drop from a similar game a year ago.

A factor for Saturday’s drop was the 28-0 lead Crimson Tide had 16 minutes and 59 seconds into the game. The prime-time semifinal for the 2017 season, a 24-6 victory by Alabama over Clemson in the Sugar Bowl, averaged 20.56 million viewers.

The game marked only the second time in the 17week NFL season that nonNFL programming topped the weekly prime-time ratings. The only other time was for Fox’s coverage of Game 5 of the World Series.

With figures for CBS not available from Nielsen because the network and the ratings company have not agreed on a new contract, the week’s most-watched nonsports program was the second-season premiere of the Fox science-fiction series “The Orville,” which averaged 5.68 million viewers, eighth for the week.

NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Tennessee Titans to decide the NFL’s final playoff berth was third among prime-time programs airing between Dec. 24 and Sunday, averaging 16.05 million viewers.

ESPN’s Orange Bowl pregame show also topped “Sunday Night Football,” averaging 16.23 million viewers to finish second for the week, according to live-plussame-day figures released by Nielsen Thursday.

In a week with little original scripted programming on the major broadcast networks, the semifinal made ESPN the week’s most watched network, averaging 5.73 million viewers.

NBC was second, averaging 5.16 million, followed by ABC, which averaged 3.23 million, and Fox, which averaged 2.85 million.

ABC’s most-watched program was the Christmas night telecast of the Lakers’ 127-101 win over the defending NBA champion Golden State Warriors, which was seventh for the week, averaging 7.99 million viewers.

“The Orville” followed Fox’s 29-minute NFL postgame show, “The OT,” which averaged 9.58 million viewers and was fourth for the week. Here are the combined rankings for national prime-time network and cable TV last week (Dec. 24-30), as compiled by Nielsen. They are based on the average number of people who watched a program from start to finish during its scheduled telecast or on a playback device the same day. Nielsen estimates there are 289 million potential viewers in the U.S. ages 2 and older. Viewership is listed in millions. CBS figures were unavailable due to a contract dispute with Nielsen.