ASU/CAL football game records huge television rating

According to Nielsen Media Research, last Saturday's California/Arizona State football game generated the highest rating of the season for the Sun Devils on FSN Arizona. Additionally, it was the highest ASU football rating on the network for a game that was not against rival Arizona since 1998.

The Sun Devils 31-20 win over the Bears registered a 7.4 rating/13 share in the Phoenix market, which means that an average of 133,392 homes in the Valley watched the game. In Phoenix, one rating point represents 18,026 households. A rating is the percentage of all television households in a market, while the share is the percentage of those television sets in use that were tuned into the game.

The rating was a season high for the Sun Devils on FSN Arizona, representing a 32% increase over the year's previous best figure (Washington, 5.6) and the highest rating for an ASU game that was not against Arizona since Sept. 5, 1998 (Washington, 8.2).

Saturday's ASU/Cal telecast peaked at an 11.5/23 share and at the end of the game, nearly a quarter of the market's television sets that were on were tuned into the game.

The BCS ranked No. 4 Sun Devils return to FSN Arizona this Saturday afternoon when they travel to Eugene to take on No. 5 Oregon in a game that has huge national title implications. The network's coverage gets started at 3:30 p.m. from Autzen Stadium with Trey Bender doing the play-by-play and Juan Roque is the analyst.

FSN Arizona televises the most regional sports action in the state and is the exclusive cable television home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Phoenix Coyotes, Phoenix Suns, Arizona Cardinals, Arizona State University, University of Arizona, Northern Arizona University, Arizona Rattlers and Phoenix Mercury. FSN Arizona is currently seen in 2.8 million households in Arizona & New Mexico and can also be seen across the country via home satellite services.