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Fox expands Friday night college football offerings

Fox

Fox is playing with its college football television windows again.

The network is expected to announce a full season of Friday night games called “Fox College Football Friday,” which will include nine Big Ten games and two Big 12 games. An official announcement is expected this afternoon.

The Friday night schedule follows the success of “Big Noon Saturday” and the previous pregame show in recent years, so why all the experimentation outside of the traditional college football window?

“Both are attempts by us to exploit what we believe to be a friendly competitive scenario,” said Fox President, Insights and Analytics Mike Mulvihill said SBJ. “We're taking advantage of a scenario where instead of playing a game on Saturday afternoon, where there may be seven or eight competing networks playing college football, we're moving one of those games to Friday, where it may be either the only college football game there is, and if not the only one, then the best college football game there is.”

Friday night's programming will focus on the West Coast programs, which is no coincidence since the Big Ten will add the former Pac-12 quartet of USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon to its roster this fall. Games will begin between 8 and 11 p.m. ET on Fox and will include each of the four new Big Ten members.

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The most important encounters on the program include:

  • October 4 – Michigan State at Oregon (9 p.m.)
  • Oct. 18 – Oregon at Purdue (8 p.m.)
  • November 8 – Iowa at UCLA (9 p.m.)
  • November 15 – UCLA in Washington (9pm)

“With the Big Ten expanding to 18 schools, there is now enough game capacity available that we believe we can meet all of our commitments for Saturday and the conference can meet its commitments to CBS and NBC and still have enough good games to play To fill the schedule for Friday night,” Mulvihill explained.

Although the program consists primarily of Big Ten games, the station will conclude the season on Friday evenings with Big 12 games: Arizona vs. Kansas State on September 13th and Utah vs. UCF on November 29th. Both games start at 8 p.m. The Mountain West title game will also air on Fox on Dec. 6 at 8 p.m.

“We really like this Black Friday game where Utah could try to play its way into the playoffs,” Mulvihill said.[The Friday slate is] “First and foremost, it's a Big Ten strategy, but it's not just a Big Ten strategy.”

Fox has been making a big showing in the college football space lately. In 2023, the Big Noon Saturday window hit its best ever, averaging 6.739 million viewers — an 8% increase from 2022 and a 14% increase from 2021. Fox Sports Digital also had its most-streamed college football regular season record in 2023, a 23% increase from 2022. Mulvihill noted that college sports viewership for the company as a whole has also increased nearly 50% over the past five years and over 150% over the past 10 years.

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