SKEDBALL: Weekend Sports Ratings Bowl

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The final week of the NFL season, Week 17, is unusual in a few ways.  First, all 32 teams play (no byes), and all 16 games are on Sunday (no Thursday night game on NFL Network and no Monday Night game on ESPN).  Additionally, both CBS and FOX have a doubleheader with games at 1:00 pm and 4:30 pm ET.  (In the first 16 weeks, the two networks alternate airing the 4:30 pm national game.)

FOX’s doubleheader won each broadcast window.  At 1:00 pm, the FOX regional package (11.5 HH rating) narrowly defeated the CBS regional (10.7 HH rating).  The main CBS early game (10.0 rating for Houston-Indianapolis in 42% of the country) actually rated higher than the main FOX game at 1:00 pm (8.7 rating for Philadelphia-Giants in 40% of the country), but the other FOX 1 pm games were much stronger than the regional CBS 1 pm games (particularly Chicago at Detroit).

At 4:30 pm it was no contest.  FOX’s late afternoon coverage (mostly Green Bay at Minnesota) averaged a 16.1 rating to CBS’s 8.6 rating (mostly the meaningless Miami at New England game).

NBC’s Sunday Night Football at 8:30 pm averaged an excellent 18.3 HH rating in the 56 metered markets (Dallas at Washington for a winner-take-all game with the NFC East conference title and final playoff spot at stake).  In most weeks, the 4:30 game (either on FOX or CBS) usually beats the 8:30 NBC game, but NBC managed to be the top NFL dog yesterday because (a) the NBC game was basically an early playoff game, (b) FOX’s main contest was only a quasi-playoff game (Green Bay didn’t need to win to get into the playoffs but it could have ended Minnesota’s playoff hopes if they had won), and (c) CBS siphoned off important rating points at 4:30 with its lame Miami-New England game.

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Local Market Ratings

Usually, the Giants and Jets as well as the 49ers and Raiders do not compete at the same time.  But with the normal NFL broadcast rules suspended on this crowded weekend, viewers in New York and the Bay Area were forced to choose between their home teams at 1 pm and 4:30 pm ET, respectively.  And the results only confirmed the also-ran status of the Jets and Raiders.  At 1:00 pm in New York, the Giants game hit a 15.2 HH rating on WNYW/FOX, while the Jets game against the even more pitiful Buffalo Bills scored a 5.3 rating on WCBS.  At 1:30 pm PT in the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose television market, the 49ers game hit a 16.7 rating on KTVU/FOX, while the Raiders posted a hideous 3.2 rating on KPIX/CBS.

RG3 fever has truly hit Washington, DC, where the SNF victory over Dallas scored a 44.6 HH rating on WRC/NBC.  Only fans in Milwaukee (49.9 HH rating for their Packers game) and Minneapolis-St Paul (44.8 rating for their Vikings) tuned in greater numbers.

SATURDAY SPORTS.  Nothing significant aired on the broadcast networks Saturday (the highest-rated Saturday sports program for each network is listed below).  ESPN carried a college football triple header of bowl games, part of the worst post-season structure in all of sports.  Three meaningless games on Saturday (two of which featured no teams ranked in the top 25) struggled in the 3 to 4 HH rating range.  The slow move to a playoff system for college football is welcome, but it until there is a four-week, 16-team playoff format for college football, the NCAA remains a joke on this matter.