• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, March 8, 2017

Last fall, when NFL TV ratings started to fall, some people said it was because Colin Kaepernick started to kneel. As his symbolic protest against racial injustice and other American failings, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback refused to stand for the National Anthem at the beginning of games.

He knelt instead and the gesture caught on with other pro players.

According to TiVo’s Q4 Video Trends Report, it appears Kaepernick’s protest irked fans so much they may have stopped watching. Per the new report, 18.2% of respondents said they were watching fewer NFL games than the year before.

Most stopped for more typical reasons: they were too busy, the games weren’t very exciting or they felt there were too many commercials.

But nearly a quarter of respondents marked “other.” When TiVo probed further, it discovered 46.5% wrote their game watching habits changed because of “political issues” like kneeling for the anthem.

In fact, if “politics related to teams/players” had been listed as a specific choice, 10.7% of all respondents who watched less would have chosen that. (Kaepernick, a free agent now, says he will stand for the anthem in the upcoming season, though his political activism continues in public ways that make him a leading and influential figure in sports.)

That’s only one-eye opening component of the study. The other has to do with online viewing.

The report shows that 6.1% watched games online, a seemingly healthy number and possibly an indication that the easy availability of NFL games on digital devices is not lost on consumers.  (Those respondents were otherwise marked in part of the group watching fewer games on television.)

TiVo’s third-party surveying firm, however, speculates streaming seems to “cause” less viewing.  

“TiVo’s Data Science Team wanted to dive deeper into this audience to see what other factors or viewing habits could be related to this decline,” the report explains. “The results of this analysis revealed that one of the strongest predictors is whether or not the respondent owns a streaming device.

"While those who own a streaming device did not cite one particular reason —no single reason was over-represented in this group — these respondents systematically found reasons not to watch the NFL.

“Essentially, streaming device owners are finding excuses for not watching as many NFL games. Because younger generations tend to be more likely to own a streaming device, the Data Science Team decided to further analyze whether age plays a role in NFL’s loss of viewership.

The TiVo quarterly report (formerly called the Digitalsmiths’ report) polled 3,079 people during the last quarter of the year.

One caveat: TiVo talked to Americans and Canadians, so potentially the patriotism issue may be a little off-base. But probably not much--30.7% of all respondents say they never watch NFL games. That group probably takes in many viewers north of the border.

Otherwise, the report also showed that overall, people are apparently re-thinking the value of that what they’re seeing on TV. When this report was compiled for Q3 in 2016, respondents said a fair price for the the top 20 channels would be $32.92 per month.

When the same question was asked in Q4, the value dropped all the way to $28.87, a 12.3% dip.

That indication of TV ennui fits with another recent report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration that notes 2.3 televisions were used in American homes in 2015, down from an average of 2.6 televisions per household in 2009.

The report also shows “tremendous” upticks in awareness and use of TV Everywhere apps in the last few years. Now, 61.5% use a TVE app weekly, a 16% increase in just the last year.

Among those that use it, about one in four use a TV Everywhere app six or seven times a week.

pj@mediapost.com