Hasta La Creative!

Twenty years ago, in that carefree era before TiVo and the internet hatched their separate plots to lay waste to the TV advertising model, an old-fashioned ratings slump had network executives thrashing at night on their Egyptian cotton sheets. On the eve of a bidding war that would see the average rights fee soar 150%, a sudden unforeseen drop in National Football League deliveries set off a chain reaction of aggrieved rationalization, imprudent finger-pointing and general doomsaying. As viewers seemingly began to lose interest in football, spooked network suits more or less went through Kbler-Ross’ five stages of grief, although they fumbled the ball before coming to terms with the whole “acceptance” thing.

Sound familiar?

Last season, there was much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments as NFL ratings went retrograde. During the first nine weeks of the 2016 season, overall deliveries fell 12% versus the year-ago period, thanks in large part to a string of significant ratings declines in the primetime packages. Household ratings for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” dropped 20% in the nine weeks before the presidential election, while ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” fell 19% in the network’s target demo of adults 25 to 54, and the multi-network “Thursday Night Football” package fared little better. Suddenly the one product that was thought to be wholly immune to the ravages of TV’s ongoing ratings affliction seemed as vulnerable as any wheezy sitcom or insipid melodrama.

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