Did more people in South Florida and nationally watch Heat or UM on Saturday? The answer

Barry Jackson
·2 min read

What might have been the year’s toughest viewing decision for South Florida sports fans ultimately yielded this conclusion:

According to Nielsen’s numbers from Saturday night, more people locally and nationally were interested in watching a Miami Heat playoff game than a Miami Hurricanes football game. But it was very close.

Locally, 6.7 percent of Miami-Fort Lauderdale homes with TV sets watched Game 3 of Heat-Celtics, compared with 6.3 percent for the Hurricanes’ game against Louisville.

One ratings point in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market equals 16,522 homes.

The Heat rating was down from the 8.7 local rating for Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals and an 8.3 for Game 2.

Nationally, the Heat-Celtics game Saturday averaged 3.81 million viewers, compared with 3.79 million viewers for the Hurricanes-Louisville game.

The Heat-Celtics game on ESPN was the most-watched program on television on Saturday. And the UM game on ABC was the most-watched program on the over-the-air major networks on Saturday night.

Now keep this in mind: The UM game had a natural advantage nationally and locally because it was on free television (ABC), while the Heat game was on cable (ESPN).

So that makes the Heat’s win locally more impressive.

ESPN and ABC had planned to avoid scheduling the Heat and Hurricanes at the same time Saturday night, but that was foiled when the Virginia-Virginia Tech game — which had been scheduled to air on ABC on Saturday night — was canceled due to COVID-19. That forced ABC to move the UM game to prime time, opposite the Heat.

ESPN lead college football announcer Chris Fowler kept Hurricanes viewers updated on the Heat score. And there were undoubtedly many viewers, particularly in South Florida, who switched between both games.

THIS AND THAT

ESPN’s popular “College GameDay” will originate from Hard Rock Stadium on Saturday morning, hours before UM plays FSU on ABC.

But the public is not invited to attend because of COVID-19.

For the first two weeks of the program, the traveling group has included Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard and David Pollack. That isn’t expected to change, with Herbstreit calling the UM game with Chris Fowler and Howard based in Miami.

ESPN decided to put the Fowler/Herbstreit team on UM-FSU instead of the competing Alabama-Missouri game on ESPN, which will be called by No. 2 team Sean McDonough and Todd Blackledge.

▪ Good news for Dolphins fans without NFL Network: WPLG-ABC 10 will simulcast NFL Net’s coverage of Thursday night’s Miami-Jacksonville game. Fox’s Joe Buck and Troy Aikman call Dolphins-Jaguars.