In the latest entry for ESPN as part of the Poynter Review Project, Poynter Institute Ethics Group Leader Kelly McBride wrote ESPN "hit its stride" with NFL coverage after the lockout ended, but before that "bumped its way into stories and stumbled and fumbled trying to connect a disinterested audience with a complicated story." It is "not that ESPN did a worse job than other newsrooms covering the NFL labor dispute," but more that the "story was a bad TV story, an awkward fit for ESPN’s talents and a difficult narrative to consume." Lockout stories on ESPN.com "got underwhelming numbers of clicks," and TV ratings during the dispute "were 'soft' as well." ESPN Senior Coordinating Producer Seth Markman said, "Our viewers didn’t want to get overloaded with the details of the negotiations. No minutiae. They just wanted to know when it was going to end." Asked about the network's reporting strategy during the lockout, ESPN.com VP & Editor-in-Chief Patrick Stiegman said, "This was a different story to attack. It was esoteric and slow-moving. But that’s the lifeblood of what we do." McBride wrote sports reporters and analysts are "often out of their comfort zone in labor negotiations." As a result, it "was a struggle to know what was news, and what wasn’t." In hindsight, Markman said that he "would be more cautious about putting a timeline on anything." As ESPN now covers the NBA lockout, McBride suggested, "Resist the urge to report minute-by-minute, or even the hour-by-hour updates. Minimize live banter in favor of a prepared package that gives an overview of the issue and a roundup of latest developments. Spend those vast resources on context. New information often seems important, simply because it is new. But that same nugget, viewed over time, is often meaningless" (ESPN.com, 7/29).
FAST & THE FURIOUS: In N.Y., Judy Battista in a front-page piece noted since NFL team owners and players "signed off Monday on an agreement to end the league’s longest work stoppage, a nonstop, high-stakes, almost drunken shopping spree has been under way in an extraordinary talent bazaar." NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on Friday said, "Condensing free agency, rookie signings, trades and camp openings into basically one week is like the best roller-coaster ride ever, and no one wants to get off. Everyone wants to stay connected to the NFL every minute right now because you might miss something. It’s a fan frenzy and we love it." Battista noted it "raises the question: why not do it this way every year?" While "squeezing all transactions into one week is unrealistic in a regular year, this week’s intense fan interest could prompt the NFL to consider moving the start of free agency from the traditional midnight opening to a morning start, allowing it to be televised." Goodell said, "We are always looking for ways to create more fan interest." SportsCorp President Marc Ganis: "It was the perfect lockout. No real damage was done and now there is off-the-charts fan interest" (N.Y. TIMES, 7/30). The GLOBE & MAIL's Bruce Dowbiggin writes, "Encapsulating the process into 10 days has been a television, Twitter and radio bonanza for the NFL. The effect has been to steal attention from major-league baseball’s trade deadline and get fans talking football, not the lockout, as training camps open" (GLOBE & MAIL, 8/1). In Oakland, Monte Poole wrote, "All those years we thought we understood the true power of the almighty NFL. Now we know. We've spent the past week seeing it up close." The league "did a fabulous job of captivating" fans in the first post-lockout week (OAKLAND TRIBUNE, 7/31). SI.com's Peter King writes, "The NFL got what it wanted in This Offseason in a Very Small Box: Wall-to-wall action" (SI.com, 8/1).
BACK TO BUSINESS: NFL Network earned a 288% increase in average total day viewership last week from Tuesday through Thursday, compared to the same time period last year. For the three-day stretch, NFL Net averaged 186,000 viewers. In primetime, the network averaged 290,000 viewers, up 202% from '10. In addition, NFL Network and NFL digital media both set single-day records last Thursday. NFL Net averaged 427,000 primetime viewers, its best-ever primetime viewership outside of NFL Draft and game coverage, while NFL digital media drew 2.6 million unique users, its highest single-day traffic ever in July (NFL Network).
