Why is TV viewership for NFL games down?

[LesBaker]

Offensive wide open shootouts put eyeballs on the TV. I admit that I'm watching one game and I see a Pats 31 & Saints 27 2ndQ in the ticker I'm think what the hell and jump over to that game.
As the game reverts back to 70's style run game and defensive struggles with 14-10 games more and more of the casual fans will drift away.

And if the trends continue it will cut into revenues at bad time. Next CBA isn't going to go well as it is with the players wanting full guaranteed contracts and 75% of the pie. Add a smaller pie and Pissed people.

Unless the union gives in to HGH testing and more stringent testing in general they won't get guaranteed contracts.

The owners can hold out WAY longer than the players.

 

[Athos]

Unless the union gives in to HGH testing and more stringent testing in general they won't get guaranteed contracts.

The owners can hold out WAY longer than the players.

I could dig it.

I wanna see me some Keanu at QB and a fat sumo guy at guard.

 

[Prime Time]

If you're able to leave your political leanings out of this, consider some comments on this topic today from Rush Limbaugh...
******************************************************************
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/09/30/the_many_reasons_behind_the_nfl_ratings_decline

The Many Reasons Behind the NFL Ratings Decline

The subject of NFL ratings. Now, there's a lot going on in the NFL to its detriment. I've been amazed by much of it. Much of the harm being done in the NFL is actually being transmitted by sports media, which can go either way. I mean, on the one hand, you can say they're doing their job. On the other hand they are literally attacking the hand that feeds them, in many ways.

Now, the NFL, as far as what it's officially saying about the ratings decline, is to really not acknowledge it except to say that they think there have not been great marquee matchups. They've gone on to say they've been up against a different kind of competition, the presidential campaign. They're blaming presidential politics for a lot of this, and indeed, on Monday night, the Saints and the Falcons Monday night game had the lowest Monday Night Football audience in years, decades, actually.

But it also must be pointed out that even though the NFL's numbers are down, they're still dwarfing traditional broadcast television. But nobody likes a downward trend in numbers because at the NFL's level, at these networks' level they're looking at make goods or free commercials for sponsors.

If you're guaranteeing a certain audience and you're charging X-amount per commercial on the guarantee of an audience, if that audience isn't there, you owe the sponsor a make-good, free commercials or reduced rates for the rest of the flight to make up for what you're not delivering that you promised. And at those levels that's a big deal.

So it can end up being expensive for the broadcast networks that are paying through the nose for the rights to broadcast these games. So it's in nobody's interests to be lackadaisical about this decline. What's fascinating is to listen to people talk about it and not even mention what are likely the real culprits here. I could list a bunch of things that I think might be contributing to a decline in ratings the NFL. And I think there are a lot. And I think it's been slowly developing.

I don't think the ratings decline, even though it's showing up this year, is strictly because of things happening this year. I think these things have been trending. And they are many. I think the overall apparent -- let me give a real-world example.

The playoff game this past January between the Steelers and the Bengals. Now, to many people it was great TV, it was a great game. You had action. You had an unexpected outcome. The Steelers coming back and winning after being down with no time left to actually come back on the field. It was only because of personal foul penalties committed by the Bengals that ended up putting the Steelers in field goal range to kick a field goal to win the game.

They had no business winning the game. It was one of the most outrageous losses I have ever seen. It should have been embarrassing. It should have gotten people fired. It should have gotten people reprimanded. It was an absolute disaster for the Cincinnati Bengals organization. They hadn't been to the playoffs since 1991 and they were destined to go, and what happened, because of on-field behavior, both during play and outside play.

In other words, teams are standing around while penalties are being marked off and players are whining and moaning to the ref and one of them had made contact with the ref. That's another 15 yards.

There were 30 yards in penalties, an unnecessary roughness hit on a defenseless receiver to the head, and then a cornerback, Adam "Pacman" Jones complaining with the referees about something and touched one of them, that's another 15 yards. I think viewers see this kind of thing and this is not the kind of football they want to watch.

The people that advocate for it, "It's great TV, man, great TV, and it was great hitting," but it wasn't football. It looked like something you see not on the football field, and it makes people nervous. This is a slow build. That one game, that one incident, there is no one game or one incident that's gonna be responsible for the decline.

The league, at the same time, you fans, I'm sure, note all the suspensions. You can look at that one of two ways. You can say that the league is going overboard here on penalizing these players for putting performance enhancing drugs in their bodies or human growth hormone, and you can think the league is being too restrictive here.

The other way of looking at it is, are there this many cheaters in this game? Are there this many guys violating the rules? And what that does is make people question the legitimacy of what they see on the field.

You know what one of the biggest arguments in football is what the heck is a catch anymore. I don't know about you, but I don't like waiting five minutes for a referee to review video to declare something was a catch or not when it clearly looked like it was to the naked eye and even in the replay. But there's this rule, "Well, it didn't maintain control through the play."

The number of replays and the length of time they take coupled with the commercial breaks, depending on the game you can see three plays take 10 minutes. You score a touchdown, commercial break. Extra point, commercial break. Kickoff, commercial break. So you have three plays there and you've got at least eight minutes of commercials. Slow, little things.

Now you add to it Colin Kaepernick and the open disrespect for America. I don't care what you think about how great that is, how honorable that is, what great free speech it is, what great civil protest it is, this is not what people want to see. This is not why they tune in. They don't tune in to a football game to be told how rotten their country is. They don't want to hear it.

It's not why people watch. Whether people know it, whether ardent fans know it -- and I suspect they do. But, believe me, going to a game, watching it on TV, there's a lot of fantasy involved, thinking you can do it, how great that life would be. "Man, I would love to be an NFL player!" You live your life through these guys, depending on how old or young you are.

You use the time to get away from all the other days of the week where you hear how rotten your country is, or you hear how rotten you are. You go to watch a sport... Baseball, too. Football, it doesn't matter what it is. It's an escape from all that. And now the sport is bringing all that stuff to it and promoting it. And we'll see if people adjust to it and end up not minding it. We'll see. But the early indications are the people are not thrilled.

They hear that every day elsewhere in their lives. They don't want to hear it Sunday afternoon, Sunday night, or Monday night, now Thursday night. It's a number of things that I think are accumulating. The suspensions of star players. Deflategate. Look, a lot of people think it was a legitimate suspension 'cause it's the Patriots, and everybody thinks and knows they cheat. Other people think, "My God, you took your biggest star off the field for four weeks!"

The NFL's a television show -- that's what it is -- and the NFL is a stage. Those fields, those stadiums are stages, and the NFL owns the stage. Now you have players trying to commandeer the stage that they didn't build. That's for their own purposes, political purposes, nothing to do with the game. The NFL has made no bones about its devotion to America and its patriotism with so many big American flags on display and military groups participating in the national anthem and God Bless America.

Now the focus is on a bunch of players who are making millions of dollars talking about how oppressed they are in the greatest country on earth, and it's not washing with a bunch of people. So it's not just one thing. It's a trend that is occurring with a whole lot of elements in it. But you can't read sports media today -- you cannot read it -- without endless stories on player here or player there accused of some crime or violating some NFL rule, abusing women, driving under the influence. Whatever it is.

It may be no greater percentage of the NFL than any other population group. But it's being heralded! I mean, it's being really pointed out. Then you've got to add to this the media doesn't like the commissioner, and so they think everybody should hate the commissioner. Now, I'm not gonna weigh in. Whether Goodell deserves to be hated by the fans is beside the point now. He is, whether he deserves to be or not.

The media would tell us that he's despised and hated because of the Ray Rice suspension. "He didn't take it seriously enough. Ray Rice slugged his wife in that elevator and dragged her out of there, and he only got a six-week suspension!" They blew up, and so now Ray Rice got a full-year suspension; they had to come back to it. For that one incident that started the ball rolling on how the Goodell is out of touch.

I'm telling you, the noteworthy news surrounding the NFL is not about great plays, it's not about great games anymore. It's about all this off-field stuff. And it's just not the kind of stuff that makes people want to tune in to see that we say gonna happen on the field every Sunday! The reporting on the game has changed entirely. You have this concussion stuff with all these stories now about parents that aren't gonna let their kids play football.

Any time now, because the sensitivity has been raised... Any time there is a collision on the field that involved head strikes and helmets, now the public (outraged), "My God, that's cheating! How bad! Throw those guys out of there!" It's totally changed the way people watch the game, appreciate the game, understand how it's played. I think they've got huge problems here, and we're seeing the beginning here of what could be a major problem unless they get their hands on it, and I don't know that they know what their problems are.

 

[VegasRam]

Bingo!

 

[-X-]

If you're able to leave your political leanings out of this, consider some comments on this topic today from Rush Limbaugh...
******************************************************************
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/09/30/the_many_reasons_behind_the_nfl_ratings_decline

The Many Reasons Behind the NFL Ratings Decline

The subject of NFL ratings. Now, there's a lot going on in the NFL to its detriment. I've been amazed by much of it. Much of the harm being done in the NFL is actually being transmitted by sports media, which can go either way. I mean, on the one hand, you can say they're doing their job. On the other hand they are literally attacking the hand that feeds them, in many ways.

Now, the NFL, as far as what it's officially saying about the ratings decline, is to really not acknowledge it except to say that they think there have not been great marquee matchups. They've gone on to say they've been up against a different kind of competition, the presidential campaign. They're blaming presidential politics for a lot of this, and indeed, on Monday night, the Saints and the Falcons Monday night game had the lowest Monday Night Football audience in years, decades, actually.

But it also must be pointed out that even though the NFL's numbers are down, they're still dwarfing traditional broadcast television. But nobody likes a downward trend in numbers because at the NFL's level, at these networks' level they're looking at make goods or free commercials for sponsors.

If you're guaranteeing a certain audience and you're charging X-amount per commercial on the guarantee of an audience, if that audience isn't there, you owe the sponsor a make-good, free commercials or reduced rates for the rest of the flight to make up for what you're not delivering that you promised. And at those levels that's a big deal.

So it can end up being expensive for the broadcast networks that are paying through the nose for the rights to broadcast these games. So it's in nobody's interests to be lackadaisical about this decline. What's fascinating is to listen to people talk about it and not even mention what are likely the real culprits here. I could list a bunch of things that I think might be contributing to a decline in ratings the NFL. And I think there are a lot. And I think it's been slowly developing.

I don't think the ratings decline, even though it's showing up this year, is strictly because of things happening this year. I think these things have been trending. And they are many. I think the overall apparent -- let me give a real-world example.

The playoff game this past January between the Steelers and the Bengals. Now, to many people it was great TV, it was a great game. You had action. You had an unexpected outcome. The Steelers coming back and winning after being down with no time left to actually come back on the field. It was only because of personal foul penalties committed by the Bengals that ended up putting the Steelers in field goal range to kick a field goal to win the game.

They had no business winning the game. It was one of the most outrageous losses I have ever seen. It should have been embarrassing. It should have gotten people fired. It should have gotten people reprimanded. It was an absolute disaster for the Cincinnati Bengals organization. They hadn't been to the playoffs since 1991 and they were destined to go, and what happened, because of on-field behavior, both during play and outside play.

In other words, teams are standing around while penalties are being marked off and players are whining and moaning to the ref and one of them had made contact with the ref. That's another 15 yards.

There were 30 yards in penalties, an unnecessary roughness hit on a defenseless receiver to the head, and then a cornerback, Adam "Pacman" Jones complaining with the referees about something and touched one of them, that's another 15 yards. I think viewers see this kind of thing and this is not the kind of football they want to watch.

The people that advocate for it, "It's great TV, man, great TV, and it was great hitting," but it wasn't football. It looked like something you see not on the football field, and it makes people nervous. This is a slow build. That one game, that one incident, there is no one game or one incident that's gonna be responsible for the decline.

The league, at the same time, you fans, I'm sure, note all the suspensions. You can look at that one of two ways. You can say that the league is going overboard here on penalizing these players for putting performance enhancing drugs in their bodies or human growth hormone, and you can think the league is being too restrictive here.

The other way of looking at it is, are there this many cheaters in this game? Are there this many guys violating the rules? And what that does is make people question the legitimacy of what they see on the field.

You know what one of the biggest arguments in football is what the heck is a catch anymore. I don't know about you, but I don't like waiting five minutes for a referee to review video to declare something was a catch or not when it clearly looked like it was to the naked eye and even in the replay. But there's this rule, "Well, it didn't maintain control through the play."

The number of replays and the length of time they take coupled with the commercial breaks, depending on the game you can see three plays take 10 minutes. You score a touchdown, commercial break. Extra point, commercial break. Kickoff, commercial break. So you have three plays there and you've got at least eight minutes of commercials. Slow, little things.

Now you add to it Colin Kaepernick and the open disrespect for America. I don't care what you think about how great that is, how honorable that is, what great free speech it is, what great civil protest it is, this is not what people want to see. This is not why they tune in. They don't tune in to a football game to be told how rotten their country is. They don't want to hear it.

It's not why people watch. Whether people know it, whether ardent fans know it -- and I suspect they do. But, believe me, going to a game, watching it on TV, there's a lot of fantasy involved, thinking you can do it, how great that life would be. "Man, I would love to be an NFL player!" You live your life through these guys, depending on how old or young you are.

You use the time to get away from all the other days of the week where you hear how rotten your country is, or you hear how rotten you are. You go to watch a sport... Baseball, too. Football, it doesn't matter what it is. It's an escape from all that. And now the sport is bringing all that stuff to it and promoting it. And we'll see if people adjust to it and end up not minding it. We'll see. But the early indications are the people are not thrilled.

They hear that every day elsewhere in their lives. They don't want to hear it Sunday afternoon, Sunday night, or Monday night, now Thursday night. It's a number of things that I think are accumulating. The suspensions of star players. Deflategate. Look, a lot of people think it was a legitimate suspension 'cause it's the Patriots, and everybody thinks and knows they cheat. Other people think, "My God, you took your biggest star off the field for four weeks!"

The NFL's a television show -- that's what it is -- and the NFL is a stage. Those fields, those stadiums are stages, and the NFL owns the stage. Now you have players trying to commandeer the stage that they didn't build. That's for their own purposes, political purposes, nothing to do with the game. The NFL has made no bones about its devotion to America and its patriotism with so many big American flags on display and military groups participating in the national anthem and God Bless America.

Now the focus is on a bunch of players who are making millions of dollars talking about how oppressed they are in the greatest country on earth, and it's not washing with a bunch of people. So it's not just one thing. It's a trend that is occurring with a whole lot of elements in it. But you can't read sports media today -- you cannot read it -- without endless stories on player here or player there accused of some crime or violating some NFL rule, abusing women, driving under the influence. Whatever it is.

It may be no greater percentage of the NFL than any other population group. But it's being heralded! I mean, it's being really pointed out. Then you've got to add to this the media doesn't like the commissioner, and so they think everybody should hate the commissioner. Now, I'm not gonna weigh in. Whether Goodell deserves to be hated by the fans is beside the point now. He is, whether he deserves to be or not.

The media would tell us that he's despised and hated because of the Ray Rice suspension. "He didn't take it seriously enough. Ray Rice slugged his wife in that elevator and dragged her out of there, and he only got a six-week suspension!" They blew up, and so now Ray Rice got a full-year suspension; they had to come back to it. For that one incident that started the ball rolling on how the Goodell is out of touch.

I'm telling you, the noteworthy news surrounding the NFL is not about great plays, it's not about great games anymore. It's about all this off-field stuff. And it's just not the kind of stuff that makes people want to tune in to see that we say gonna happen on the field every Sunday! The reporting on the game has changed entirely. You have this concussion stuff with all these stories now about parents that aren't gonna let their kids play football.

Any time now, because the sensitivity has been raised... Any time there is a collision on the field that involved head strikes and helmets, now the public (outraged), "My God, that's cheating! How bad! Throw those guys out of there!" It's totally changed the way people watch the game, appreciate the game, understand how it's played. I think they've got huge problems here, and we're seeing the beginning here of what could be a major problem unless they get their hands on it, and I don't know that they know what their problems are.

 

[RamFan503]

If you're able to leave your political leanings out of this, consider some comments on this topic today from Rush Limbaugh...
******************************************************************
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/09/30/the_many_reasons_behind_the_nfl_ratings_decline

The Many Reasons Behind the NFL Ratings Decline

The subject of NFL ratings. Now, there's a lot going on in the NFL to its detriment. I've been amazed by much of it. Much of the harm being done in the NFL is actually being transmitted by sports media, which can go either way. I mean, on the one hand, you can say they're doing their job. On the other hand they are literally attacking the hand that feeds them, in many ways.

Now, the NFL, as far as what it's officially saying about the ratings decline, is to really not acknowledge it except to say that they think there have not been great marquee matchups. They've gone on to say they've been up against a different kind of competition, the presidential campaign. They're blaming presidential politics for a lot of this, and indeed, on Monday night, the Saints and the Falcons Monday night game had the lowest Monday Night Football audience in years, decades, actually.

But it also must be pointed out that even though the NFL's numbers are down, they're still dwarfing traditional broadcast television. But nobody likes a downward trend in numbers because at the NFL's level, at these networks' level they're looking at make goods or free commercials for sponsors.

If you're guaranteeing a certain audience and you're charging X-amount per commercial on the guarantee of an audience, if that audience isn't there, you owe the sponsor a make-good, free commercials or reduced rates for the rest of the flight to make up for what you're not delivering that you promised. And at those levels that's a big deal.

So it can end up being expensive for the broadcast networks that are paying through the nose for the rights to broadcast these games. So it's in nobody's interests to be lackadaisical about this decline. What's fascinating is to listen to people talk about it and not even mention what are likely the real culprits here. I could list a bunch of things that I think might be contributing to a decline in ratings the NFL. And I think there are a lot. And I think it's been slowly developing.

I don't think the ratings decline, even though it's showing up this year, is strictly because of things happening this year. I think these things have been trending. And they are many. I think the overall apparent -- let me give a real-world example.

The playoff game this past January between the Steelers and the Bengals. Now, to many people it was great TV, it was a great game. You had action. You had an unexpected outcome. The Steelers coming back and winning after being down with no time left to actually come back on the field. It was only because of personal foul penalties committed by the Bengals that ended up putting the Steelers in field goal range to kick a field goal to win the game.

They had no business winning the game. It was one of the most outrageous losses I have ever seen. It should have been embarrassing. It should have gotten people fired. It should have gotten people reprimanded. It was an absolute disaster for the Cincinnati Bengals organization. They hadn't been to the playoffs since 1991 and they were destined to go, and what happened, because of on-field behavior, both during play and outside play.

In other words, teams are standing around while penalties are being marked off and players are whining and moaning to the ref and one of them had made contact with the ref. That's another 15 yards.

There were 30 yards in penalties, an unnecessary roughness hit on a defenseless receiver to the head, and then a cornerback, Adam "Pacman" Jones complaining with the referees about something and touched one of them, that's another 15 yards. I think viewers see this kind of thing and this is not the kind of football they want to watch.

The people that advocate for it, "It's great TV, man, great TV, and it was great hitting," but it wasn't football. It looked like something you see not on the football field, and it makes people nervous. This is a slow build. That one game, that one incident, there is no one game or one incident that's gonna be responsible for the decline.

The league, at the same time, you fans, I'm sure, note all the suspensions. You can look at that one of two ways. You can say that the league is going overboard here on penalizing these players for putting performance enhancing drugs in their bodies or human growth hormone, and you can think the league is being too restrictive here.

The other way of looking at it is, are there this many cheaters in this game? Are there this many guys violating the rules? And what that does is make people question the legitimacy of what they see on the field.

You know what one of the biggest arguments in football is what the heck is a catch anymore. I don't know about you, but I don't like waiting five minutes for a referee to review video to declare something was a catch or not when it clearly looked like it was to the naked eye and even in the replay. But there's this rule, "Well, it didn't maintain control through the play."

The number of replays and the length of time they take coupled with the commercial breaks, depending on the game you can see three plays take 10 minutes. You score a touchdown, commercial break. Extra point, commercial break. Kickoff, commercial break. So you have three plays there and you've got at least eight minutes of commercials. Slow, little things.

Now you add to it Colin Kaepernick and the open disrespect for America. I don't care what you think about how great that is, how honorable that is, what great free speech it is, what great civil protest it is, this is not what people want to see. This is not why they tune in. They don't tune in to a football game to be told how rotten their country is. They don't want to hear it.

It's not why people watch. Whether people know it, whether ardent fans know it -- and I suspect they do. But, believe me, going to a game, watching it on TV, there's a lot of fantasy involved, thinking you can do it, how great that life would be. "Man, I would love to be an NFL player!" You live your life through these guys, depending on how old or young you are.

You use the time to get away from all the other days of the week where you hear how rotten your country is, or you hear how rotten you are. You go to watch a sport... Baseball, too. Football, it doesn't matter what it is. It's an escape from all that. And now the sport is bringing all that stuff to it and promoting it. And we'll see if people adjust to it and end up not minding it. We'll see. But the early indications are the people are not thrilled.

They hear that every day elsewhere in their lives. They don't want to hear it Sunday afternoon, Sunday night, or Monday night, now Thursday night. It's a number of things that I think are accumulating. The suspensions of star players. Deflategate. Look, a lot of people think it was a legitimate suspension 'cause it's the Patriots, and everybody thinks and knows they cheat. Other people think, "My God, you took your biggest star off the field for four weeks!"

The NFL's a television show -- that's what it is -- and the NFL is a stage. Those fields, those stadiums are stages, and the NFL owns the stage. Now you have players trying to commandeer the stage that they didn't build. That's for their own purposes, political purposes, nothing to do with the game. The NFL has made no bones about its devotion to America and its patriotism with so many big American flags on display and military groups participating in the national anthem and God Bless America.

Now the focus is on a bunch of players who are making millions of dollars talking about how oppressed they are in the greatest country on earth, and it's not washing with a bunch of people. So it's not just one thing. It's a trend that is occurring with a whole lot of elements in it. But you can't read sports media today -- you cannot read it -- without endless stories on player here or player there accused of some crime or violating some NFL rule, abusing women, driving under the influence. Whatever it is.

It may be no greater percentage of the NFL than any other population group. But it's being heralded! I mean, it's being really pointed out. Then you've got to add to this the media doesn't like the commissioner, and so they think everybody should hate the commissioner. Now, I'm not gonna weigh in. Whether Goodell deserves to be hated by the fans is beside the point now. He is, whether he deserves to be or not.

The media would tell us that he's despised and hated because of the Ray Rice suspension. "He didn't take it seriously enough. Ray Rice slugged his wife in that elevator and dragged her out of there, and he only got a six-week suspension!" They blew up, and so now Ray Rice got a full-year suspension; they had to come back to it. For that one incident that started the ball rolling on how the Goodell is out of touch.

I'm telling you, the noteworthy news surrounding the NFL is not about great plays, it's not about great games anymore. It's about all this off-field stuff. And it's just not the kind of stuff that makes people want to tune in to see that we say gonna happen on the field every Sunday! The reporting on the game has changed entirely. You have this concussion stuff with all these stories now about parents that aren't gonna let their kids play football.

Any time now, because the sensitivity has been raised... Any time there is a collision on the field that involved head strikes and helmets, now the public (outraged), "My God, that's cheating! How bad! Throw those guys out of there!" It's totally changed the way people watch the game, appreciate the game, understand how it's played. I think they've got huge problems here, and we're seeing the beginning here of what could be a major problem unless they get their hands on it, and I don't know that they know what their problems are.

Thanks Obama.

Note: Please notice the blue font. It was a joke.

 

[LesBaker]

That was a great show and deserved many more years.

 

[Shoman01]

For me it's watching games for over 42 years. Bored with it.
The Rams have lost for what seems like forever, none of their games have any meaning.
Living in Seattle, being around all of the obnoxious Seahawk fans has turned me away from the NFL.
I have found the college game much more entertaining the last decade.

 

[PARAM]

For me it's watching games for over 42 years. Bored with it.
The Rams have lost for what seems like forever, none of their games have any meaning.
Living in Seattle, being around all of the obnoxious Seahawk fans has turned me away from the NFL.
I have found the college game much more entertaining the last decade.

It's not just the Rams games though. Football has changed and not for the better. Start with the QBs as they are the gold standard to NFL profits. You can't hit them high. You can't hit them low. You can't hit them late. You can't hit them if they run and slide. Here's a tip......if you don't want to get hit, get rid of the ball fast and don't run with it. It's the reason I stand up and cheer anytime one of them is hit in that fashion. It's just nice to see from time to time. Take the WR's next. You can't hit them beyond 5 yards. You can't make helmet to helmet contact. You can't hit them if they're defenseless. Here's a tip......if you think you're going to be "defenseless" get alligator arms and curl into a ball. Running backs are the guys who get the shaft. You can hit them as much as you like. Why? Because they run the ball and that's how you stop them. Apparently, that doesn't apply to QBs and WRs. That is why the game has changed for the worst. Look at the old photos or video. QBs were tough. They ran and got hit. They got hit late. They got hit high and low. They made throws with defenders hanging off all parts of their body or equipment. And they made some damn good plays under those circumstances. Same goes for WRs. I know, I know......it's not what most fans want to see. But the alternative ain't tackle football. It's become a gentleman's game. But if I want to watch a gentleman's game, I'll put on the golf channel.

 

[Tailback]

The pricing for Sunday Ticket is absurd. I'm not paying for that. Every year TV gets more and more expensive when I only watch about 10 channels for a total of maybe 10 hours a week. Something's got to give. I want a-la-carte pricing to include subscribing to one single NFL team.

 

[Merlin]

Watching an NFL game it's all about the refs. Game stoppages, instant replay reviews nuking EVERYTHING, more and more rules every season that refs have to manage adding to more and more reasons to stop the actual game and make us sit on the edge of our seats for a decision by the refs. Games are not decided by players nearly as much as they were in the past, they're decided by what the refs notice and enforce. And the worst thing about it is the refs are set up to fail with the whole system designed to dissect what they have to make judgment calls on in a matter of seconds.

It's idiotic and it's wrong IMO. They've ruined their own game. The inability to define a catch alone demonstrates how stupid the owners and committees have become. WTF was wrong with two feet down, one action with possession? Why do they feel the need to say a guy who takes two effin steps and falls to the ground and drops the ball is a non-catch? That's a fumble. You don't have to possess the ball through the ground if you HAD possession of it prior.

We have forgotten what it's like to watch a real game. Go back and queue up an old game and pay attention to the stoppages. They didn't have reviews. They didn't have as many forced commercial breaks to feed the owners' greed. This game has changed for the worse and they're not gonna do anything about it until the fans vote with their feet. So I'm glad to see those numbers man.

If they want to fix this get rid of the automatic reviews. Give the teams one review each half, and make the instant replay cost more if they're wrong. Accept that errors are going to happen, but be willing to sacrifice them for the good of the fans' viewing experience by streamlining the game and giving them more action instead of reviews and commercial breaks.

 

[Antonius]

It was an absolute disaster for the Cincinnati Bengals organization. They hadn't been to the playoffs since 1991

The Bengals have made the playoffs several times since 1991. But of course Lim-ass couldn't be bothered to know facts.

 

[kurtfaulk]

You can't make helmet to helmet contact.

how is this a bad thing? the one thing about the nfl i never understood when i started watching in 1990.

growing up watching rugby league it was ingrained that when you make a tackle you hit with the shoulder then wrap your arms around the player. then i watched the nfl and i see guys diving head first into another player's head. crazy shit.

.

 

[Prime Time]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/brandon...tball-keeps-dropping-in-ratings/#4201340765b8

NFL's 'Monday Night Football' Keeps Dropping In Ratings
Brandon Katz

There’s no denying that the numerous #BoycottNFL online campaigns and fan outrage aimed at the National Anthem protests in the NFL have taken a toll in terms of viewership. Additionally, cord-cutting continues to eat into traditional TV’s ratings at an alarming rate. But could there be something else at play?

We’re barely a year removed from the NFL setting all-time records in viewership, yet now the league is on pace for its lowest ratings in years. That’s a sharp and unexpectedly sudden turn.

Given the politicized controversies and the variety of streaming options this year, have we reached a cumulative point of football fatigue? The numbers suggest so.


Last night’s Monday Night Football matchup between the Minnesota Vikings and New York Giants drew a 9.1 overnight rating, an 8% drop from last year’s comparable Week 4 game between the Detroit Lions and Seattle Seahawks. The New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs game in 2014 earned a 9.6 rating.

While the number of streaming viewers has increased – last night’s game attracted 262,000 average minute viewers on digital platforms, a 23% increase from last year – total viewership is still trending downward. Last week’s Monday Night Football game unsurprisingly got clobbered in the ratings thanks to the presidential debate. That game drew a 5.7 overnight rating, the lowest in MNF history.

Overall, MNF‘s ratings are down a whopping 19% this year, according to Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch.

Now that the numbers have come in for last night’s game, we can safely label the NFL’s ratings problems as a larger trend. The question now becomes how does the NFL fix the problem?

 

[Prime Time]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/440792/roger-goodell-feels-great-disturbance-force-er-profits

Roger Goodell Feels a Great Disturbance in the Force, Er, Profits
by JIM GERAGHTY

Everyone associated with the National Football Leagues has to be worried about this.

One of the current parlor games playing out in sports media executive suites is why the NFL’s television ratings have dramatically fallen through the first four weeks of the season. Most notably, each of the league’s primetime showcases (Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football and Thursday Night Football) are down double-digit percentage drops in viewers.

In a particularly troubling trend, ratings for Monday Night Football were down 19% prior to Monday’s Giants-Vikings game, including the lowest-ever viewership in the history of the series when just 8.047 million viewers watched the Saints-Falcons. (That game went head-to-head with the first Presidential debate.) The Giants-Vikings drew a 9.1 overnight rating on Monday, which was the highest MNF overnight of the year. That’s the good news. The bad news? It was still down 8% from the 9.9 for last year’s Week 4 matchup (Seahawks-Lions) that didn’t feature the New York market.

More troubling data: NBC’s Sunday Night Football drew an 11.0 overnight for Steelers-Chiefs on Sunday, down 26% from the same window last year with the Saints-Cowboys. That’s an alarming drop, even with Dallas as the NFL’s best television draw and a blowout game. (The NBC Sports p.r. department said in a release that the Steelers’ 22–0 first quarter was the most-lopsided opening quarter in 155 NBC SNF games. One can admire the rapid response team, but you can’t spin lemonade out of tomato juice.)

There’s probably more than one reason, which means it’s oversimplifying it to say Colin Kaepernick and kneeling NFL players are driving way football fans. But it’s a factor, and maybe the biggest factor.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that nearly one-third (32%) of American adults say they are less likely to watch an NFL game because of the growing number of Black Lives Matter protests by players on the field. Only 13% say they are more likely to watch a game because of the protests. Just over half (52%) say the protests have no impact on their viewing decisions.

Looks like I’m not the only one who just wants to enjoy watching the game.

Last week on the pop culture podcast, we asked whether NFL Red Zone – commercial free! – is now a preferable option to watching a game that doesn’t feature your favorite team.

One other factor: I hate the Thursday night games and I know I’m not alone. The players hate having to take the pounding of a game with just three days’ rest; some even contend the league is wildly hypocritical to say they want to avoid injuries but expect players to play two games a five-day span.

While there are occasional exceptions, most weeks the teams playing on Thursday look sloppy and unprepared. Then they go into a long, nine-day stretch before their next game, having a natural advantage and extra preparation time for their next opponent.*

I always thought one of the strengths of football, both professional and college, was the season’s weekly rhythm. Mondays bring dissection of yesterday’s game, agonizing calls to sports radio, and hopefully one good game that night. Then on Tuesday and Wednesday, the team practices and the fan’s level of interest lays fallow. Then as Thursday and Friday roll around, the buzz increases.

The talking heads on the sports channels and columnists make their picks, and the injury lists get updated. Fantasy players finalize their rosters. Friday night brings high school football, Saturday brings college football, and Sunday morning brings the pre-game shows for the professionals. The excitement builds. Tailgating meals are prepared, friends are invited over, lucky jerseys are fished out of the laundry pile, tables are reserved. Then for three hours on Sunday afternoon, it’s passion and excitement, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

Baseball, basketball, hockey – they’re all great sports, but they have several games a week in their seasons. Inevitably, some game will conflict with real life; it’s hard for every game to be a big deal or high states. The 11-game college schedule and the 16-game NFL schedule mean that every win or loss could be the one that keeps your team out of the postseason.

*Unless it’s the New York Jets, who have played terribly after Thursday games and bye weeks for several years.

 

[-X-]

One other factor: I hate the Thursday night games and I know I’m not alone. The players hate having to take the pounding of a game with just three days’ rest; some even contend the league is wildly hypocritical to say they want to avoid injuries but expect players to play two games a five-day span.

So they still haven't found a way to work the bye into schedules for teams that play on Thursday night?
Try scouring the local middle schools for a kid in pre-algebra. He could probably work the math out for you.

 

[bubbaramfan]

Count me as somone one step away from shytcanning the NFL. Too many comercials, but for me the final straw will be more rules against contact. They might as well make it "flag" fooball.

 

[FrantikRam]

There are several reasons as many have pointed out here. But to me it comes down to one person: Goodell.

The catch/non catch, player safety, officiating - all of this can be traced back to Goodell in some way - or the competition committee I guess in the case of the catch/non catch.

But I think the two main issues are player safety and officiating. I vastly prefer the NFL to college football. Even when the Rams aren't playing, I'm set up with two or three TVs, watching multiple games at the same time. I can't get enough of it.

But you can see that the player safety rules have really hit home. And here's the issue: QBs are so vital to the game, that we came up with special safety rules. Back in the day QBs were not as vital to the success - or at least the standard of QBing was different. Bradshaw won 4 super bowls while posting a career passer rating almost identical to what Keenum's is right now for this season.

You need the safety rules for all players. Pass interference is another issue.

Here is what the NFL should do:

Go to college officiating for PI and personal fouls. Stop over protecting the QBs.

Adam Silver is easily the best commissioner in pro sports right now, and the NBA has been on a MASSIVE upswing during his tenure thus far. I don't see that as a coincidence. Get rid of Goodell and make officiating easier.

 

[Prime Time]

Hey @Jorgeh0605, why would you click 'inappropriate' on an article discussing why NFL viewership is waning? You have every right to do that. Just curious.

 

[WestCoastRam]

Thursday night games were a big mistake when it came to oversaturation.