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If you think late starts are hurting TV ratings, time to wake up

NBA Finals games tip off at 9 p.m. weeknights, 8 p.m. Sundays, providing some data to study.
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You can blame the NBA playoffs and their late start times for the fact that l’ve been crankier than usual this month. An East Coaster by birth, I hate the NBA’s 9 p.m. ET tipoffs and wish they were at least an hour earlier so I could get a better night’s sleep.

Every year I complain to any network executive who will listen about the late start time. Every year, these executives trot out the same research that sets off my internal B.S. detector. Young kids are watching these games late into the night. It’s the old folks who aren’t, they say.

“I’ve always been the most skeptical,” said Artie Bulgrin, ESPN’s senior vice president of global research and analytics. “But I’m a numbers guy, and the numbers don’t lie.”

In 2007, my colleague Eric Fisher and I wrote about the World Series’ late start times and were told that the later the games start and finish, the larger the audiences across all demographics, except for the adults 55 and older. At the time, it was shocking to note that the 6- to 17-year-old demographic made up the same percentage of viewers at 8 p.m. as it did at midnight.

NBA Finals Household Ratings

The first 60 minutes for 8 p.m. vs. 9 p.m. ET start times

Year 8 p.m. 9 p.m.
2016 (Games 1-2) 8.83 9.98
2015 (Games 1-5) 8.87 9.54
2014 (Games 1-5) 7.74 7.90
2013 (Games 1-5) 7.55 9.15
2012 (Games 1-5) 6.88 8.98

Note: Sunday games started at 8 p.m., while weeknight games started at 9 p.m.
Source: ESPN


I called Bulgrin last week to see whether those numbers still held water. They don’t. It appears that even more young people are watching games later than they have previously.

Bulgrin cited NBA Finals Game 1 ratings that showed that the 11:30 p.m. ET rating for kids 2-11 was 18 percent higher than it was at 9 p.m. ET. With teens, the 11:30 p.m. ET rating was 34 percent higher.

“It’s hard to argue against the 9 p.m. start time during the week, when you want to make sure that people are ready to watch television,” Bulgrin said. “The fact of the matter is that television viewing has shifted. More and more people are staying up late to watch their favorite shows. In this case, we have to have a bicoastal view on things.”

Every ratings statistic that ESPN has seen has showed that ratings in the first hour at 9 p.m. are significantly higher than the ratings in the first hour at 8 p.m. In the NBA Finals Game 1, ratings at the 11:30 p.m. ET half-hour were much higher than at the 9 p.m. ET half-hour.

“The games continue to grow audience,” Bulgrin said. “Even at 9 p.m., you don’t have everybody tuning in at that moment.”

Why not start all the games at 10 p.m. ET, then? That surely is where this is headed, isn’t it?

“At 10 p.m., you’re probably pushing the envelop a little too far,” Bulgrin said. “We’ve never addressed that question.”

Why start the games at 8 p.m. ET on Sundays? Doesn’t that suggest that audiences still would tune in for 8 p.m. ET start times during the week?

“People are much more likely to be in and settled on Sundays, even on the West Coast,” Bulgrin said. “On weeknights, you need to be sensitive to when people are ready to watch television on both coasts.”

A key for ESPN is when the game ends. Bulgrin pointed out that NBA Finals games typically end soon after 11:30 p.m. ET — which is before the ending of the College Football Playoff championship, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and the World Series.

“The great thing about the NBA Finals is that you can count on those games roughly being nicely wrapped up in about three hours,” Bulgrin said. “Ending around midnight seems to be the perfect spot. The ratings have reflected that.”

John Ourand can be reached at jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ.

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