The NFL this year has been searching for "ways to bolster the game to tighten its grip on the public’s attention," and the league next season is "considering making the weekly lineup of games easier to find on television as well as tweaking the pace of the sport itself," according to a front-page piece by Matthew Futterman of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. The NFL "tinkered with its Christmas weekend broadcasts" in '16, and hoping to "speed the flow of its long games, some broadcasts had four longer commercial breaks each quarter instead of five shorter ones." NFL Network also showed a “double-box,” running a commercial while "continuing to show footage from the stadium to try to keep people engaged." Around the same time, NFL Films "reproduced games with different break patterns, which were then shown to focus groups." The move to shake things up comes after a season in game viewership fell and some teams "played before ugly patches of empty seats." Sources said that besides rearranging commercial lineups, the league "may simplify its Thursday night lineup, which switched networks twice during the season, and caused confusion for viewers this season with games on three networks." Also on the table is "moving up the start time for the growing number of games it plays in London, which often begin in the U.S. morning." The moves are a "rare admission from the NFL that the diminished audiences this season may not simply have been the result of a riveting presidential election." Another "worrisome note" is that the average viewer "watched 67 minutes of each NFL game" during the '16 season, "compared with 70 minutes" in '15 (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 2/1).
MINUTE BY MINUTE: In Houston, David Barron wrote under the header, "NFL Working To Keep Viewers From Taking TV Timeouts." For a "variety of reasons cited by network officials," the average fan in '16 devoted "about 155 fewer minutes to NFL games than he or she spent watching pro football" in '15. Next year, with "no presidential election on the agenda, the NFL and networks hope to get their 155 minutes back" (HOUSTON CHRONICLE, 1/30).
