ESPN last night drew a 7.2 overnight rating for the Bears' 20-10 win over the Vikings, marking the net's lowest Week 8 "MNF" overnight since it acquired the package prior to the '06 season. While last night's game did air on Halloween, it also had no World Series competition and no NHL competition. The telecast from 8:15-11:33pm ET is down 18% from an 8.8 overnight for Colts-Panthers in Week 8 last year, which featured an at-the-time undefeated Panthers squad. Last night's game peaked at an 8.7 overnight from 9:45-10:00pm. Minneapolis-St. Paul led all markets with a 37.2 local rating (10.8 on ESPN, 26.4 on WCCO-CBS). Chicago drew a 17.4 local rating (10.7 on ESPN, 6.7 on WCIU-Ind.). The top markets were rounded out by Milwaukee (12.1), New Orleans (10.6) and Norfolk (10.6) (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).
CUBS WIN! CUBS WIN! NBC finished with 18.0 million viewers for the Cowboys’ OT win over the Eagles on “SNF,” which put the net in second place on Sunday night up against Fox’ World Series Game 5 coverage. The 18.0 million viewers is not the lowest “SNF” audience of the season, but marks the lowest “SNF” featuring the Cowboys since a game against the Eagles in Week 9 of ’07 with no MLB competition (16.5 million viewers). This past Sunday’s Eagles-Cowboys matchup also is the first Cowboys “SNF” matchup to drop below 20 million viewers since Cowboys-Packers drew 19.4 million viewers in Week 9 of ’10. Eagles-Cowboys also was down sharply from 23 million viewers last year in Week 8 for Packers-Broncos, which aired up against the clinching Royals-Mets World Series Game 5, but had the benefit of a matchup between Packers QB Aaron Rodgers and former Broncos QB Peyton Manning. Meanwhile, NBC set a live “SNF” streaming record for Eagles-Cowboys with 933,000 unique streams. That figure is up 84% from the Week 8 Packers-Broncos matchup last year (Karp). In Chicago, Phil Rosenthal writes Eagles-Cowboys telecast "should have been a solid draw for the NFL," with "two popular division rivals in a close game." But it was an "extra-long NFL Sunday that began around breakfast-time" with a Redskins-Bengals game from London that ended in a tie -- and there "may be a saturation point" (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 11/1).
LET THE SUN SHINE: AD AGE's Anthony Crupi writes whatever the root cause of the NFL's dwindling TV audience, it is "important to remember that the pain has not been distributed equally." The ratings drops primarily are being "felt in the standalone primetime windows," with "MNF" down 22% through Week 7, "SNF" off 19% and "TNF" taking a 17% hit. However, viewership for Fox' Sunday national windows to date is up 1% (AD AGE, 10/31 issue). KMC Consulting's Kathy Connors tweeted, "We may need to recalibrate #NFL ratings expectations in current TV/content/cord cutting climate, but league still in an enviable TV position."
OUR BRAND IS CRISIS: In DC, Sally Jenkins writes the NFL lately has "seemed formulaic and lacking in a certain kind of authenticity." It is "no great mystery as to why the NFL’s ratings have been dropping: Viewers don’t especially like the stories they’re watching." The NFL's "overemphasis on 'brand' and 'shield' has meant increasingly petty attention to discipline and uniformity, which is sucking away dynamism and rendering it joyless." The league is "picking apart its own product with stoppages." It is "hard to dismiss the coexisting facts that the NFL has ruined the flow of its on-field stories while experiencing a spate of deeply negative stories off the field -- most of them self-inflicted and perpetuated" (WASHINGTON POST, 11/1).
SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS: ESPN’s Ryan Clark noted some of the NFL's marquee games this season "haven't necessarily been as interesting as we would like." Clark: "They haven't been as enthralling, the play hasn't been as high of a level as we expect from certain NFL games." He added it is "kind of the perfect storm for the ratings to be down for football and up for baseball.” ESPN's Herm Edwards speculated college football "has hurt" the NFL. He said, "When you watch a college football game, it's 35, 40, 50 points and people like that. People love scoring. ... You watch an NFL game and it's like, ‘Oh, it’s 7-3 in the first quarter.’ You’re going, ‘This is a boring game.'" ESPN's Mike Greenberg said a "huge part of the problem" is the fact that current players are complaining about the game "more than anybody else." Greenberg: "The people who are complaining about the NFL more than anyone else are the NFL players and the NFL players’ union. ... Every week on The Players’ Tribune, Richard Sherman is talking about how awful the National Football League is and how awful Roger Goodell is and how awful all of these things are. When the people inside are the ones who are saying that, how are the people outside expected to react?” (“Mike & Mike,” ESPN Radio, 11/1). In DC, Cindy Boren writes whatever the causes, the NFL "believes it has the luxury of time in which to figure things out." Soon enough, the election will be over and the games will have "meaningful postseason implications." We will "see what happens then" (WASHINGTON POST, 11/1).
NO CONCERN FROM AD BUYERS: MULTICHANNEL NEWS' R. Thomas Umstead writes advertisers "don't seem to have a problem with the NFL's lackluster TV ratings performance." A source said, "It's nothing we're freaking out over." The source added, "The networks are working with us and right now; we are still in a good place." Media consultant Lee Berke said that football fans are "watching NFL games on a variety of platforms that aren't effectively being measured yet." Berke: "Every game is offered live on three or four different screens, but we're not measuring anything on a realtime basis except for one screen" (MULTICHANNEL NEWS, 10/31 issue).
STAYING LOCAL: Sunday's Patriots-Bills drew a 34.8 rating in Boston on the local CBS affiliate, marking the second-best figure for a non-primetime Patriots game this season (Patriots). Meanwhile, the most-watched sports event in the Nashville market last week was Titans-Jaguars with a 24.7 local rating on the local CBS affiliate. That topped the the Univ. of Tennessee's 24-21 loss to South Carolina on ESPN2, which drew a 10.4 local rating. UT games have "gone from being the most-watched sports events in the Nashville market to not being in the top five." Saturday's game against South Carolina was the second-lowest local figure for a UT game this season (Nashville TENNESSEAN, 11/1).
