Cable TV Sports Ratings – Sports TV Ratings

Tim Brando & I disagree about the CFP Championship game’s TV ratings

January 9, 2019

If I believed that the college football championship viewership should decisively be the second most-watched television program of the year every year I’d be right there with Tim. But I have trouble coming up with a reasonable basis for believing the CFP championship game should be the second most-watched program on TV. I also have no basis for knowing whether ESPN was promised better numbers than it’s getting and even…

NFL Ratings Update through 2018 week 5

October 10, 2018

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Through 5 weeks, across all networks and TV windows NFL viewership is averaging 15.6 million viewers per minute which is up 3 percent versus the same point in 2017. Here are the Y/Y changes for various demographics: Demographic NBC FOX CBS ESPN NFLN All Nets Households 2% 2% 6% -3% 2% 3% Total viewers 1% 1% 6% -2% 2% 3% Adults 18-49 -5% -3% 1% -4% -1% -1% Men…

Studio show ratings and I don’t care (even Get Up!’s & High Noon’s)

July 27, 2018

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Some of you wish I cared more about studio show ratings. I don’t. “I know you love High Noon, you must care about those ratings!” Nope. I’m worried Spotify will throw stupid money at Bomani and that the cult of E-Sports will assimilate Pablo. I’m worried they’ll become lost to me that way, but I don’t care about High Noon’s ratings. Or Get Up’s or First Take’s or Undisputed’s, First…

The cable bundle is bending. When does it break?

May 1, 2018

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Not this month. People are interested in Nielsen’s cable coverage estimates for a variety of reasons. One is sometimes people just like long lists of familiar names with numbers attached to them. Maybe I’m just projecting. There are plenty of fans who are very interested in the difference in coverage between say USA & FS1 should WWE be on the move and the lists are useful for that. Recently…

What should ESPN do with 6PM? Maybe nothing. (Updated)

April 25, 2018

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I give what Jim Miller says a lot of weight and that’s a good strategy. I also have this tea leaf reading thing where if Jim Miller says something and I’m surprised that he said it I immediately jump to the conclusion that whatever he just said is going to happen. Very small sample size but so far the approach does have excellent predictive value. Last Friday when Jim…

Updated: “Get Up!” debuts down 13% versus year ago SportsCenters

April 3, 2018

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Update: the 7a-10a debut telecast of Get Up! averaged 283,000 viewers per minute. That’s down 13 percent from the 327,000 the 7-10a SportsCenters averaged the same day a year ago. First Take averaged 417,000, up from 400,000 a year ago. I’m team: “Disappointing? Sure. Disastrous? Nah.” But it’s possible I’m the only member of that team who isn’t employed by ESPN. Original post: Sources tell me “Get Up!” debuted to…

What’s the value of the out of home viewers? We’ll find out with the next Super Bowl. Maybe.

February 9, 2018

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Late Thursday NBC Sports PR issued a release saying out of home viewing of Super Bowl LII increased viewership by more than 12 million viewers. NBC even boasted about turning around the out of home viewing numbers so fast: “Out of home” viewership has been previously reported, but never before within four days of a live event. I’m not knocking NBC or Nielsen. In a world where we won’t see Live+7…

Total Audience Delivery measurement delivering for ESPN

December 7, 2017

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ESPN just released a batch of numbers resulting from switching to Nielsen’s Total Audience Delivery (TAD) measurement service in late September. What is TAD? It is the ratings you’ve been used to seeing for the past decade+ (TV + DVR) PLUS streaming and out of home viewing (OOH). If you’re not really into the numbers the story is that ESPN is getting some bang for it’s TAD buck: as a result…

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