• by Adam Bernard , April 16, 2001

After weeks and weeks of getting lambasted in the press for killing NBC's Saturday nights in the ratings war, the XFL finally has something to smile about - at least they're not the NHL. This season, the NHL has "earned" ratings so low they're practically envious of the 1.7 the XFL has averaged over the past five weeks.

The NHL averaged a 1.1 for its five Saturday broadcasts on ABC this season, down 15% from the ratings for a total of four games on Saturdays and Sundays last season. That 1.1 rating is also 48% lower than Fox's regular-season NHL telecasts drew in 1996 (somewhere, the inventor of the glowing puck is smiling).

The news gets no better for the NHL when it comes to their target audience. The ratings on ABC for men 18-34, dropped close to 15%. On ESPN, though, ratings among men 18-34 jumped 12%, which is good, but still represents a significant slowdown from the 33% jump in that demographic from 1999 to 2000.

Overall, ratings were down 5% on ESPN, 14% on ESPN2 during the regular season, and lower than TNN's Sunday afternoon telecasts of the XFL.

Commentator, John Davidson, has his ideas on why the league is doing so poorly, saying "The New York and Chicago markets are down because their teams aren't that good. I could throw L.A. in that, too. Where would the NBA be if the Knicks and Lakers weren't that good? Our big city markets aren't doing that well. Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Denver, these markets do extremely well."

The New York Islanders are a laughingstock, and haven't reached the playoffs since 1994, while both the New York Rangers and the Chicago Blackhawks haven't seen the postseason since 1997. Poor teams will lead to diminished interest in those areas.

The average ratings for ABC's games have been 0.9 in both New York and Chicago. In Los Angeles, whose Kings haven't advanced past the first round of the playoffs since 1993, the average rating was 0.6, less than half of what it was in 1999-00. By contrast, ABC averaged an 8.4 in Detroit, 4.3 in Denver and 3.8 in Philadelphia.

Davidson added, "I don't think they put on the best shows possible. Sometimes we don't do as much homework as we should. We don't sell the players as much as we should, we complain about the referees too much. Let's let the general public know about the players."

Barry Melrose, a former NHL player and coach who's now an analyst for ABC and ESPN, has another guess as to why ratings lag. "Our season is too long. We have so many games on our air - 82 games plus two months of playoffs. I've been saying that for a while but it will never get done because we need the attendance to pay the salaries."

It's playoff time for the NHL, and ratings tend to rise for all sports during their leagues' respective playoff games. ESPN will be showing up to 40 playoff games, ESPN2 up to 28, and ABC up to 11, including Games 3-7 of the Stanley Cup finals. The Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC and ESPN, is in the second season of a $600 million, five-year deal with the NHL, which is about double what Fox paid in the NHL's previous contract.

- Adam Bernard may be reached at Adambernard@mediapost.com