Monday's rescheduled Chiefs-Bills game drew a huge audience in the K.C. marketGETTY IMAGES
The NFL's viewership picture is "taking clearer shape," as the Week 6 numbers were, "on balance, some of the best the league has seen all year," according to Jay Busbee of YAHOO SPORTS. TV news has enjoyed a "massive surge in viewership the closer we draw to the election," while virtually every sport has "experienced significant declines in viewership." While some fans are tuning out of the NFL because of "objections to social justice messaging," there is "no consistency to the ratings declines that would lead one to believe those fans have truly boycotted the league once and for all." The NFL faces its last significant "ratings drains from baseball (the World Series ends in a few days) and the election over the next two weeks; at that point, the 'competition' question will recede" (SPORTS.YAHOO.com, 10/20).
AGAINST ALL ODDS: In K.C., Blair Kerkhoff reports Fox' coverage of Chiefs-Bills recorded a 44.4 rating in K.C., figures for the market that "compare to the season opener," Texans-Chiefs. That game on NBC did a 47.8 rating in K.C. on a Thursday night (Sept. 10). The 4:00pm CT kickoff time on Monday "should have blunted the viewing numbers," but that "didn't happen" in K.C. (K.C. STAR, 10/21).
WHO DAT? In New Orleans, Jeff Nowak reported local ratings for Saints games are "down about 13%," from an average of 53.3 and a peak of 57 over the first five weeks in '19, to a 41.5 average and a peak of 45.6 this year. Viewing windows and prime matchups are "often a better measuring stick than week-over-week comparisons, but no matter how you slice it, the 2020 figures are low." What those numbers "don't show is that despite local declines the Saints remain a top draw across the country; they've landed four national broadcasts in the first five games for the second consecutive year." Cowboys-Saints in Week 4 "marked the highest-rated game of the NFL's regular season and the No. 5 broadcast across all programming for the year" (NOLA.com, 10/20).
