Buyers Take a Wait-and-See Approach to NFL Ratings Slide
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With the first quarter of the 2016 NFL regular season on the books, media executives and Monday morning quarterbacks of all stripes are engaged in a whodunnit of sorts, as the enigma that is the league’s shrinking TV ratings has become something of a locked-room murder mystery. There are plenty of clues to sift through, and any number of conclusions to be arrived at, but while football fans and data sleuths alike puzzle over the evidence, the well-heeled gent with the knife in his back is bleeding out all over the area rug.
Actually, he’ll be fine. It’s probably just a flesh wound — although you wouldn’t know it from all the teeth-gnashing, garment-rending analysis that has been published in light of the NFL’s recent ratings setbacks.
Before we get into the whys and wherefores of the great pigskin perplexity, let’s introduce a little dose of perspective to the proceedings. For starters, while ratings for the three primetime NFL packages are down quite a bit compared to the year-ago period, the Sunday afternoon regional and national windows are holding up rather nicely. And perhaps more to the point, with 192 regular season games remaining on the 256-game schedule, network execs and media buyers alike agree that there is still plenty of time for the ratings picture to improve. In other words, no one with skin in the game is panicking … at least not yet.
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