NFL Draft Draws Best Combined Overnight Rating On ESPN-NFL Network Since '14

ESPN and NFL Network on Thursday night combined for a 6.7 overnight rating for Round 1 of the NFL Draft, marking the telecast's best figure since a record-setting 8.7 overnight in '14, as fans waited on QB Johnny Manziel's selection. The combined figure is up 6% from a 6.3 overnight last year. ESPN alone from 7:59-11:49pm ET drew a 4.8 overnight for its Draft coverage, up slightly from a 4.7 last year. However, the 4.8 is down from a 5.1 in '15. ESPN on Thursday night peaked at a 5.6 overnight from 9:30-9:45pm and is expected to get a primetime win among all cable and broadcast TV channels. Cleveland-Akron topped all markets for ESPN's coverage for the fourth straight year with a 12.6 local rating. That was down from the market's 13.3 last year, when the Browns had actually traded out of the overall No. 2 pick prior to the Draft. Rounding out the top five markets for ESPN were host city Philadelphia (9.1), Columbus (9.0), Greenville-Spartanburg (8.7) and a tie between Birmingham and Dayton (7.6). NFL Net drew a 1.9 overnight for its telecast, matching '14 as a record Draft figure for the league-owned net. The 1.9 overnight was up from a 1.6 last year and a 1.4 in '15. On the streaming front, WatchESPN set records for the Draft among average minute audience, total unique viewers and total minutes. Meanwhile, Twitter on Thursday night saw 4 million tweets about the NFL Draft. The most-tweeted moment during the Draft was when the Bears moved up to the No. 2 pick to select QB Mitchell Trubisky. QB Deshaun Watson, selected by the Texans at No. 12, was the most-tweeted-about player on Thursday night. Overall, the most-retweeted post about the Draft was from NFL Net's Ian Rapoport at 7:45pm on the Browns trying to trade for Redskins QB Kirk Cousins (Austin Karp, Assistant Managing Editor).

CATERING TO THE FAN: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell discussed the league's TV ratings prior to the Draft, and he said the "real focus for us is making the experience better for our fans." He said, "We could see, and this started several years ago, that there was too much down time in the game, there were too many breaks. So when we have a great moment in our game, all of a sudden we go to some kind of break." Goodell: "We want to get out of the way, we want to let the football do the talking and let our broadcast partners ... talk and focus on football. That’s what the fans want, so we’re going to reduce the commercial breaks from five to four per quarter. We’ll take 25% of those out in the game and we’re going to find a lot of other ways to reduce that down time, whether it’s speeding up the replay process by bringing it to the sideline, as opposed to moving it off, and making announcements quicker. I think all of those things are going to make for a faster pace, less down time, and we don’t want to give the fans any excuse to turn the channel or move to another device" ("SportsCenter Special," ESPN, 4/27).