TV ratings down this season
Despite the league’s efforts to curb a slide that dates back to the 2016 season, NFL television ratings fell 9.7 percent during the 2017 regular season, according to numbers released Thursday by Nielsen.
Ratings dipped by eight percent during the 2016 season, a decline partly attributed to the presidential election.
Nielsen numbers showed a typical game during the 2017 season was watched by 1.6 million fewer people than in 2016 — 14.9 million vs. 16.5 million.
According to an ESPN report, other factors cited include the dilution of the product through ‘‘ Thursday Night Football,’’ which was broadcast on the NFL Network, CBS, NBC and Amazon Prime in 2017. This season, both Fox CEO James Murdoch and CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus blamed the ratings slide on the proliferation of games.
After the ratings drop in 2016, the NFL experimented with the for- mat for television commercials and attempted to speed up the game.
The decline in ratings meant the networks had to offer make- goods to advertisers in order to compensate for the smaller audiences, a network executive told the Los Angeles Times.
Despite the drop in viewership, 20 of the 30 highest- rated shows and 37 of 50 on television in 2017 were pro football games, and both NBC and ESPN had the mostwatched shows every week of the season in terms of total audience and in all key male demographics, AOL reported.
The NFL’s Red Zone cable channel, which takes viewers to different games whenever there is a scoring opportunity, drew an estimated one million weekly viewers, pulling fans away from their local games on CBS and Fox.
NBC’s “NFL Sunday Night Football” was the most- watched program in prime time, with 18.2 million viewers this past season. That figure is down from 20.3 million viewers in 2016 and 22.5 million in 2015.
NBC, CBS, Fox and ESPN pay more than $ 1 billion a year apiece for NFL TV rights, with ESPN spending the most — $ 1.9 billion for “Monday Night Football,” according to AOL
President Donald Trump, who has been insisting NFL ratings are down this season because of player protests during the national anthem, revived his criticism of the NFL in a tweet Thursday morning, before the Nielsen numbers were released.
Two days before the beginning of the NFL playoffs, the president retweeted an image of a woman and child on the ground near the grave of a soldier, an apparent nod to the potential sacrifices made by members of the military.
“So beautiful,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel!”