Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Once you have lost Trooper York....you have lost America!


The NFL’s ratings are indeed tanking. Care to guess why?

Hot air POSTED AT 4:01 PM ON SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 BY JAZZ SHAW


This is the story I’ve been expecting to see since the pre-season began, honestly. The NFL has been embroiled in one controversy after another for more than a few years. Through it all, the fans have still remained largely loyal and the ratings for broadcasts have been a proven winner in the advertising market. With that as the backdrop there’s been very little incentive for change. But this year something has been different. I’m still watching the Jets’ games, but I found myself losing interest in sitting through some of the other contests. While preparing for our weekly prognostication battle, Ed Morrissey even signaled on a recent Monday night that he’d be watching something other than the big game.
It wasn't just us. As Pat Imig reports at the Sporting News, viewer-ship is down and it’s not simply a one week blip on the radar.
The League of Integrity, the National Football League, is beginning to learn it’s not infallible after all.
Early TV ratings reports show viewer-ship is down in prime-time games and in featured national telecasts.
The NFL Kickoff game on NBC was down from a year ago, and the Week 3 “Sunday Night Football” telecast between major markets Dallas and Chicago was down 7 percent from 2015 (Denver-Detroit). That’s pretty significant when you consider the market sizes.
We also have seen the two lowest-rated “Monday Night Football” telecasts since at least 2009, which includes a Week 2 snoozer between Philadelphia and Chicago. The Week 3 contest between Atlanta and New Orleans drew a 5.7 overnight rating, which would be the lowest MNF rating ever on ESPN.
I suppose it would be easy for most of us who follow the sport to single out one issue which is causing this. Pat Imig lists quite a few suspects on the list of possibilities and I wouldn’t be surprised if many of us were quick to point to Colin Kaepernick and the spate of other players protesting the national anthem. To be sure, that’s got to be a factor. I’d hardly be the first to pen a column about how football is a treasured tradition where even the most politically involved among us get to set aside the daily grind of partisan warfare and just enjoy ourselves for a few hours. And protesting the national anthem is simply unpatriotic, no matter what motivated you to do it. Who needs a serving of that alongside their beer and hot wings?

But Pat goes on to list a variety of other factors which have been building up for some time. Some are technical issues of the modern era, including cord cutters and an instant gratification society which would rather get its entertainment through social media or other nontraditional outlets. There were also more controversies than just the national anthem. The debate over concussions and brain injuries turned off some fans. Plus, the use of the gridiron as a marketing tool for everything from charities to cars or beverages didn’t help.
In the end, maybe all of the controversies come back to the same thing. We love football and we really don’t want to have the rest of these questions shoved in our faces while we root for the home team. The NFL needs to get its players, coaches and owners under control and get back to the purity of the sport. There’s another 165 hours every week to deal with the rest of it. Let’s just get on with the game.
(Football is for fat angry old white men. It has always been so. Who are the boosters of College Football? Fat angry old white Alumni. Who are the season ticket holders? Fat angry old white businessmen. You piss us off and who is going to pay? Millennial's who have to split the cost of a pack of cigarettes? Black Lives Matters Activists? Lesbians? Illegal Immigrants?
Go fuck yourself NFL.)

13 comments:

edutcher said...

Too many "players" who were thugs, murderers, and anything else you'd care to mention.

Gate has been dropping the past 5 years, so it figures viewership would follow.

If any of the owners want to save their investment (not to mention all the cities that built stadia), they going to dump Goodell and find a commissioner who's going to be a disciplinarian, rather than a PC wienie.

AllenS said...

Long before the KaperDICK, I burned out over the TD jive motherfucker dance in the end zone. The only way to fix this shit, is to start at the college level of football. No can read/write, no can play.

Patrick said...

All the BS aside, the NFL
is getting harder to watch. First a commercial, then the play that scores a touchdown, then a commercial, then the extra point and another commercial, then a kickoff and another break. Add in the constant reviews, it's just tough to watch unless your really care about the game. I'll give them credit, though, they're making every last dime off of the game that they can before they finally make it wholly unwatchable. I give it maybe 15 years.

windbag said...

We just signed up for live television for the first time in almost 30 years. One thing we won't be watching is the NFL. My wife and I used to be big fans, but absolutely do not care one iota anymore, especially after this recent nonsense.

The NHL is where it's at. Go Bruins!!

The Dude said...

Hockey only matters when Lord Stanley's Cup is in Raleigh. Other than that, meh.

It will be interesting to see how the ratings trend over the season.

Trooper York said...

Sometimes when it goes it don't come back.

Like hair. Just sayn'

windbag said...

I'm five hours away from Raleigh, yet their games are blacked out for me.

rcocean said...

I've cut the cord. If you're still paying your TV cable bill, the NFL gets its cut. They don't really care whether you watch or not.

rcocean said...

BTW, people imagine that MSNBC is costing NBC a ton of money because no one watches. Wrong. MSNBC gets 65% of its revenue from Cable TV subscribers. They get a cut of every Cable TV subscription. That and the add revenue is more than enough to pay a few talking heads and rent costs on a TV studio.

The Dude said...

My OTA television is permanently blacked out, but I sure enough watched the final game when they won the cup, and I can't even stand hockey. Y*nkee flat ball we always called it.

As for Osama - sure, he's dead now, but he was a tall sumbitch - wonder if he ever considered a career as a quarterback - he was less anti-American than his brother from another mother.

Yeah, I can see it now - Osama tossin' the ol' pigskin around. Works for me.

Leland said...

The Texans are doing well, and so far their players are behaving. Still, I've only caught one game, and that was the humiliation to the Patriots. I said before I'm done with Every Social Progressive Network, but the NFL is going quick. I do have cable, but always kept it for live events, such as sports. It won't be much longer, and I'm sure more and more people will do the same. If not for the NFL, then because their is already too much access to alternatives. One would think these yahoos would know their time is limited, so they would want to keep milking it for awhile longer. I guess not. Better to run full speed through the ice field.

Methadras said...

Like I told you all. Patriots vs. players. Guess who's losing.

Titus said...

I can't stop watching my Bruins, Patriots and Red Sox. The Pats are undefeated with their third string QB and The Red Sox are in the playoffs.

Boston is a great sports town.