By Ken Liebeskind
Although derided by The New York Times as "bad football called by bad announcers backed by bad entertainment," the debut broadcasts of the XFL on NBC and UPN were a ratings
success.
The Saturday night broadcast on NBC scored a 8.8 rating for the 8 to 11 pm time slot that beat all other networks. The 19 percent share--14.5 million viewers, was 84 percent higher than
January Saturday nights for the network and the highest Saturday night share it received since the Summer Olympics on Sept. 30, 2000, according to Nielsen Research.
The Sunday afternoon broadcast on
UPN scored a 3.0 rating with 3.1 million viewers for the 4 to 7pm time slot that ranked third among all networks. It ranked first in four local markets and second in 11. The numbers doubled the
network's January time period averages, according to Nielsen.
"We're off to a very good start," said Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Sports and Olympics.
The debut NBC broadcast, which pitted the
New York/New Jersey Hitmen against the Las Vegas Outlaws, wasn't great football, with the New York team going scoreless. But the game was only part of the show. There were numerous shots of scantily
clad cheerleaders, sound bites from the coaches and quarterbacks in the huddle, trash-talking messages from professional wrestlers (the league is a joint venture between the World Wrestling Federation
and NBC) and visits to team locker rooms during halftime. It's being called the "all-access" concept, a novel way of broadcasting football that's geared toward capturing the same young viewers who
watch televised wrestling.
"The unique and original manner of producing the game obviously attracted a lot of very early fans," Ebersol says.
Vince McMahon, head of the WWF and the league's
founder, calls it "our brand of football."
NBC's announcing team included Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, a former pro wrestler.
The XFL sold 70% of the advertising inventory for the NBC game,
according to a NBC spokeswoman. "We expect as advertisers tune in, we will be at capacity in the near future," she says.
The high numbers on the debut weekend won't necessarily be sustained. A media
analyst predicted the numbers will drop slightly next week, although they will still be high for NBC and UPN which have suffered from low numbers in the time slots.
Next week, a third network, TNN,
joins the fray. It will broadcast games in the Sunday afternoon time slot with UPN moving to Sunday evenings, in addition to NBC. That will be the schedule for the remainder of the season, which
includes 10 weeks of regular season games followed by playoffs.
- Ken Liebeskind may be reached at KenRunz@aol.com