Friday Ratings: Pac-12 Championship Is The Demo Winner, But CBS Crime Dramas Win The Total Audience Tallies

Friday Ratings: Pac-12 Championship Is The Demo Winner, But CBS Crime Dramas Win The Total Audience Tallies

The battle for the Pac-12 representative in the New Year’s Day Rose Bowl was fought on Friday evening, with No. 17 Utah handily beating No. 10 Oregon by a 38-10 score to win the conference championship.


Devin Lloyd returned an interception for a touchdown and Cam Rising threw for another score for the winners. It is the first Rose Bowl berth in that school’s history, and drew an 0.7 and 3.51 million viewership to top the ratings night for ABC.


The CBS crime drama lineup was a tick behind football, with SWAT (0.5/5.12 million), Magnum P.I. (0.4, 5.17 million) and Blue Bloods (0.4/5.65 million) all performing strongly with new episodes.

At Fox, perennial leader the WWE Friday Night SmackDown came in with an 0.5, thanks to the return of The Beast, Brock Lesnar, who came back from an indefinite suspension


NBC saw its special reality show Baking It come in with an 0.3. The offshoot of its Making It crafting show saw Saturday Night Live former cast members Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg host. Later in the evening, newsmag Dateline went to Italy to cover the murder of Maurizio Gucci, the man from the current theatrical release House of Gucci.


The CW had Penn & Teller: Fool Us coming in with an 0.1, up slightly from last week, while Nancy Drew continued bottom-feeding with an 0.0.