Posted on 09/26/2017 2:20:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
How to square this with the emerging “boycott is happening” narrative from Sunday’s NBC and Fox ratings? It’s possible that a bunch of casual fans who normally don’t watch tuned in last night to see if there’d be a pre-game protest, artificially inflating the ratings. But if that were true, Sunday’s ratings should have been up too.
Imagine if NFL ratings ended up *increasing* this year after Trump attacked the league for being unpatriotic. That’d be the most embarrassing political own-goal since, uh, backing Luther Strange against a red-state populist when Strange was trailing consistently by 10 points in the polls.
Here was POTUS early this morning, previewing the “people are watching to see if there’s a boycott” spin…
Ratings for NFL football are way down except before game starts, when people tune in to see whether or not our country will be disrespected!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 26, 2017
…and here’s NBC, chirping happily about last night’s solid ratings:
Cowboys-Cardinals got a 9.3 overnight rating for ESPN, easily the highest-rated Monday night game of the year. That came despite some talk that the controversy surrounding players kneeling during the national anthem would depress NFL ratings…
[T]he four Monday Night Football games so far this season have averaged a 7.8 overnight rating, compared to a 6.5 overnight rating for the first four Monday Night Football games last season. And even if you throw out the game that went up against the debate last year, Monday Night Football is up year to date over the 2016 average.
For the weekend as a whole, ESPN and CBS were up, NBC and FOX were down, and on aggregate ratings across the NFL were up about 3 percent from Week Three last year.
Trump’s right about ratings increasing for the pre-game and then declining during the games themselves. Ratings across the three networks were down an average of four percent on Sunday from this time last year but ratings for the pre-game shows were way up. Still, CBS’s 1 p.m. games did well, as did last night’s ESPN game. According to a Rasmussen poll taken last week, before Trump’s “son of a bitch” comments in Alabama, 34 percent of voters said they were less likely to watch the NFL due to the anthem protests. That’s a big pool of would-be defectors. There may be a boycott happening but not one that’s large enough yet to put a dent in Monday Night Football, unless they were offset by a large crowd of rubberneckers who tuned in for the pre-game politics and inexplicably declined to change the channel for three hours afterward.
In all likelihood what we’re seeing is a “soft boycott” where fans are less likely to sit through bad games but will set aside their political annoyance for good ones. If the Cowboys are playing the Cardinals, even an unhappy Trump supporter might grit his teeth and settle in for Dak Prescott versus Larry Fitzgerald. If it’s the Jets versus the Giants? Click. To hell with these unpatriotic millionaire ingrates.
Here’s Hillary last night on MSNBC sticking the knife in Trump, wondering why he’s so comfortable attacking black athletes but not white supremacists. Her criticisms of him are getting harsher; she also wondered in an interview yesterday if he knows that Puerto Ricans are American citizens. Exit question via WaPo reporter Wesley Lowery: Why were the Cowboys booed last night for kneeling before the anthem? Was that standard razzing of the visiting team, or was it a clue that opposition to the protests isn’t about disrespecting the flag after all?
.@HillaryClinton: "Quite telling" that Trump attacks black athletes but never insults white supremacists or Putin https://t.co/5l6tnZpHQs
— All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) September 26, 2017
“People tuned in to see the freak show. It won’t last”
That and liberals who never watch football did last night trying to prop up the ratings to spite Trump. It won’t last, the liberals will be back to their normal schedule of hate mongering soon enough.
Good so tell the BLM/NFL not to worry about any silly old boycott. Nothing to see here move along folks. I guess they got the polling companies to help out with the numbers. Very easy- check just Dallas and wherever else they played and cut off the numbers after the first five minutes.
People were going to tune in to see what the cowboys would do. We got our fill and cut off the show. Done with politicizing of the NFL. Crap and what color started this shi!?
JJ and the players did not protest the anthem. Seems to me Trump is winning on that and the fans may not feel the game was disrespectful to the country.
A point missed by many on both the cowboys and cardinals.
That said if the Cowboys were somehow taken out of the NFL the league would suffer greatly re viewership.
Love em or hate em, people tune in to see them Win or Lose to their team...
Been that way for years and is not going to change. The author tried to pull a fast one re making us think something else.
Let’s not forget some of the absolutely horrific half-time shows and leftist propaganda in ads during the most recent Super Bowls. This has been coming for some time now.
How much of it was due to people tuning in to watch multi-millionaire thugs make asses of themselves on national TV?
I see this as people tuning in to see what the Cowboys would do. Now they know, and i’m betting they no longer respect the Cowboys.
Waiting for next Sunday’s Steelers telecast............
That's what I would guess. Let's see how the ratings for all of them hold up next week -- is there any team left that didn't fold?
Cowboys won’t fare well in Texas after their stunt last night, IMO.
Tom Landry and Roger Staubach would never pull crap like last night.
ABC Good Morning America stated that last nights ratings were down 14%.
This is only the 3rd Monday night game of the year. NOt a very big sampling, IMO.
Its actually pitiful to see the trap that BLM has laid for these players...
They are caught in defending their race against their country, and some can’t figure out that the race battle is best fought outside the playing field.
Also I’ve yet to see one person say if things are so bad why weren’t they improved during the 8 years we had a president with some of your ethnic background.
Maybe he wasn’t interested in you, just using you for Party power and to destroy America
Dallas fans... That’s all I can say!
One game out of how many?
I’ll wait a week and we’ll see what happens.
Allahpundit is reaching deep looking for any victory and this is all he’s got?
Hah.
Just wait until next week.
Just saw an interesting poll. The question was re approval of Roger Goodell. Results:
12% approve
36% disapprove
52% no opinion
http://truthfeednews.com/breaking-poll-look-at-roger-goodells-horrific-favorability-rating/
I had hoped to wake Tuesday morning to read that some bit of sanity to the NFL was restored. It saddened me that wasn't so.
I clicked last night ... no game on NBC or ABC or CBS or FOX.
I am not paying for any TV so I am denied even a choice to watch.
52% no opinion. Lmao. That’s the “oh is he the Kardashians publicist? Uh no? Then, like, I’m sorry but I don’t know” crowd. Pretty big %.
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