NFL TV Ratings Down 6% To Date For The Season
- by Wayne Friedman , November 27, 2017
The last four November weeks of the current NFL season have seen a steady increase in the Nielsen average TV viewers, but ratings are still trending lower overall, season-to-date, versus a year ago.
Through the 11 weeks thus far, the season is down 6% to 14.7 million viewers. This has remained relatively the same through the most recent weeks -- down 5% through week 9 and off 7% through week 7.
Week 11 posted a Nielsen 15.1 million average viewers. That's up versus the two weeks before -- 14.3 million (week 10) and 13.2 million (week 9).
For the most recent week, NBC’s "Sunday Night Football" featuring the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles posted a 12% gain to 21.1 million over the same week a year before -- the highest-rated game for week 11.
The late Sunday afternoon game on CBS, featuring the New England Patriots and the Oakland Raiders, witnessed a 19% drop from the same week a year ago to 19.0 million viewers.
For the previous week -- week 10 -- all NFL games were down versus the same period a week ago -- averaging 14.3 million from 16.2 million a year ago.
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Will the networks give make-goods for underdelivering?
The ratings are for individual games. Especially for comparisons of prior seasons, the number of televised shows is eye popping, not to mention other eyeball competition. Maybe there are no comparisons. Are viewers football weary ? You know we have attentions spans of an ant and getting shorter.
With more and more viewing options and so many so-so teams why are we surprised that average minute ratings---as opposed to total season reach---are slightly lower this season for the NFL games? Average minute ratings are declining for all kinds of TV fare as a natural result of greater channel availability---including new SVOD "channels".