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Title: NFL TV Ratings Slump Again
Source:
Bloomberg
URL Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti ... ricane-coverage-steals-viewers
Published: Sep 13, 2017
Author: Lucas Shaw
Post Date: 2017-09-14 19:36:12 by nolu chan
Keywords: None
Views: 4710
Comments: 34
NFL TV Ratings Slump Again By Lucas Shaw Fewer people watched the opening week of National Football League coverage than they did last year, a decline TV executives chalk up to Hurricanes Irma and Harvey. Cable news and the Weather Channel almost tripled their audiences in prime time and grew fourfold during the day, according to data from the networks, drawing fans away from football. “Thursday Night Football” was down 13 percent, and Sunday games on Fox and CBS also declined. “Sunday Night Football” on Comcast Corp.’s NBC, featuring the arch-rival New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys, was a rare bright spot. A drop in viewing last year caused consternation at league offices and the major media companies that count on the NFL to deliver the biggest audiences on TV. Executives blamed several factors, led by interest in the presidential election and a poor slate of games. Pro football drew $4.2 billion in regular season ad sales last year, according to Kantar Media and SMI Media Inc. Eager to get off to a good start this year, the league responded by scheduling more appealing match-ups early in the season. That didn’t work last week, and networks are now pointing to the weather. Analysts, investors and advertisers will keep an eye on early-season ratings to see if last week’s hurricane-related drop is an anomaly or continues last year’s troubling downward trend. The NFL has proved resistant to the pressure affecting entertainment programming: the growing number of people who watch TV on demand rather than live, including some who don’t pay for TV at all. “All eyes will be on this season’s ratings trends,” Michael Nathanson, an analyst with MoffettNathanson LLC, wrote in a note before the season started. “Why do we care so much about the NFL? Well, that’s where the money is.
Bloomberg
September 13, 2017, 1:40 PM CDT
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 21.
#2. To: nolu chan (#0)
The brain injury issue is hurting them. Parents don't want to support the NFL and buy merchandise or make a game day with the kids if they don't want the kids to play football at all. The NFL is oversaturated. They need to dump the Thursday night games. There's too much football and it's become a commodity. That's a bad move for the NFL who should be in the business of making games a little scarce. Too many replays and game delays and commercial interruptions in games. Too many hacks at ESPN talking Lefty politics. And, yeah, jerks like Kaepernick disrespecting the flag and the anthem. Add them all up and you get significant declines in NFL viewership and revenue. And you lose that bandwagon effect where some people will watch the big game just so they don't get left out of water cooler talk at work about the game.
The people that love football, and their families don't give a second thought to the brain injury scam. I say scam because so few people are even affected by this, no matter the data. When they get back to me with the same studies on soccer, motocross, boxing, MMA, off-roading, WWE and auto racing I will take them seriously. Until then, it sits in the "this is political BS" box.
I dunno. The NFL players who obviously took the hardest hits for the most years do seem convinced that it is A Thing. And didn't the NFL pledge a billion to research and compensation on this? We see mention after mention of NFL players donating their brains to science after death to provide more data. So it seems to me that if the NFL and the players are so united and we have a track record of retired NFL players killing themselves over the years when they were financially secure in retirement, maybe we should consider that repeated concussive injuries are bad for anyone. After all, it is against the law to shake babies in most any state because of the danger posed by the brain rattling against the skull. These injuries to football players are still the same kind of brain injury. Moral: taking hard shots to the head is always a bad idea. We mentioned Mohammed Ali on this thread. I'm sure you know that his Parkinson's was attributed to...taking too many shots to the head.
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#18. To: Tooconservative (#2)
#21. To: jeremiad, A K A Stone, nolu chan (#18)
The people that love football, and their families don't give a second thought to the brain injury scam. I say scam because so few people are even affected by this, no matter the data. When they get back to me with the same studies on soccer, motocross, boxing, MMA, off-roading, WWE and auto racing I will take them seriously. Until then, it sits in the "this is political BS" box.
Replies to Comment # 21.
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