Posted on 09/12/2018 6:52:49 AM PDT by 11th_VA
After hitting a ten-year low for its NFL Kickoff Game last Thursday, NBC hit another ten-year low for the season premiere of Sunday Night Football.
Bears-Packers delivered a 12.5 rating and 22.1 million viewers on the Week 1 edition of SNF, down 7% in ratings and 9% in viewership from last year (Giants-Cowboys: 13.4, 24.4M) and down 5% and 4% respectively from 2016 (Patriots-Cardinals: 13.1, 23.1M). Including streaming, the game had 22.5 million...
(Excerpt) Read more at sportsmediawatch.com ...
I wonder if the NFL will be too big to fail.
I’m doing my part. I watch the UFC instead. More sportsmanship and humility during after on fight than you get in a whole Sunday of football.
Hope it continues, and MR PC Roger Goodell realizes he should have just enforced the existing rule on standing during anthem.....
Keep in mind Bears-Packers is historically a marquee game. It sure isn’t Chargers-Jaguars.
I wonder if the NFL will be too big to fail.
Probably won’t fail, but will suffer declined viewership and revenues.....
Couple that with the current “ flag on every other play” and fans will soon find
other things to do and just check the scores out instead of subjecting themselves to delay/delay/ commercial / delay....
NFL still playing?
I watched most of a couple of college football games on Saturday.
Took big naps on Sunday.
The media have long relied on a hype-ratings perpetual motion machine (or so they thought). By getting the public geeked up about the NFL, even about otherwise boring things like contracts, injuries, front office intrigue and accounting transactions they hoped for and expected big ratings for games.
ESPN clearly had this blueprint when they overpaid for the NBA. Suddenly, there are daylong discussions of what this or that low-IQ college dropout ‘meant’ in his misspelled monosyllabic tweet.
Right now the media are still fighting the NFL’s corner and understandably so given their investment. They keep droning on about ‘peaceful protest’ as if we should be grateful that lefties - for once - aren’t smashing windows and torching buildings and cars.
They also can’t resist talking about astronomical dollar figures in contracts, especially guaranteed money now that it’s common knowledge that contracts are mostly worthless if and when injuries, suspensions or dropoffs in game performance occur.
But the focus - spoken and unspoken - on money is what will become the further downfall and cause of internecine war in the league. The Nielsen ratings - the coin of the realm - are a hopeless anachronism even with fancy set top boxes, diaries, meters, etc. because they cannot measure fan interest or attention span. How many people watch games with tablet or phone in hand? How many mute the ads and read Twitter? How many aren’t watching at all or use a DVR to zip through games which contain 10 min of live play in a 4.5 hr window?
The point of all this is that (direct) public pressure and media coverage are not going to be the determining factors in the NFL deciding to survive or fail - it will come from within when the money starts drying up. The mercenary players will turn on each other when the next contract involves less money, not more, and when endorsements even at local level become harder to obtain. They will try to whistle (quietly) past the graveyard but when dilettante SJWs start impacting the ability to buy a house, a car, feed a family, etc. they will take matters into their own hands.
The hope, of course, is that by then it will be too late but it will still be delicious to watch.
I think the NFL Players should Double Down and March out on to the Field during the Anthem and BURN the American Flag.
BOYCOTT THE NFL!!!
And the first Monday night game had this female play by play announcer. . .Beth somebody. . .a total mess. .from the Gus Johnson school of Sportscasters and how to sound like you’re puking your words. God, I couldn’t stand listening to her. . awful. It’s not just the kneelers. . it’s the whole package. The Left ruins EVERYTHING they touch. Thuggery on the field and women doing play by play. How nutz is that!!??
Still way too many people watching!
Really good post. Also contributing to the protest is that the NFL became too popular for the players to self police themselves. So raging hulk poses, swishy celebratory dancing, and chest slapping displays became common even for meaningless plays, and now comes protest kneeling. There’s only so many games to get any retaliation done, and each game is vital. So even if any cool players had a problem with any of it they won’t self police the jerkwads because each game is too important, especially with a million HD camera angles to capture any self policing.
Freegards
Football is the new boxing, it will be a slow, but steady decline, to irrelevance.
NFL is on the way out.
People forget, but look at the decline in the popularity of Baseball in the past 40 years. 2 players strikes during that time have radically changed the fan base.
ENTERTAINERS should remember that they are JUST that: entertainers. We go to diversions to FORGET about routine life for a short time. We can easily do without a specific form of entertainment when partaking of that particular diversion becomes too much like real life.
Pro athletes, writers, actors, musicians.... none have a “right” to a chunk of our disposable income. We don’t NEED to pay for their particular diversion.
It is becoming a mere kneeling shadow disappearing into the sunset.
Great comparison! I hope you are right.
Oh. my. gosh! I literally had the TV on mute for the duration of the time I watched the Monday night game between the Lions and the Jets.
That voice! The inane comments.
I’m normally pretty laid back, but I simply could not tolerate Beth Mowins squeaky voice. Like nails on a chalkboard.
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