In an article in Esquire magazine, writer Chuck Klosterman makes the argument that reporting on sports television ratings is detrimental.
Which is true. The ratings for sporting events live and die with the casual fan. The effect this has on sports is clear — one need only look at how the NHL has attempted to change its game in order to suit people who are not watching.
While enabling the casual fan has an effect on how the game is played, incorrect analysis of the ratings may be the more central issue. Television ratings are often reported and touted by general sportswriters who look at the rating, the percentage it increased or decreased from the previous year, and then base judgments on that alone. However, there are many contextual issues that make a simple up and down judgment of a television rating unwise.
Nobody’s watching? Really?
One of the worst habits the media has in reporting sports television ratings is making the assumption that because an event sets a record low, nobody is watching.
Take for example Game 1 of the NLCS. Rockies/Diamondbacks drew 3.6 final national rating, the lowest ever for a primetime LCS game. The Associated Press picked up the story, which has now circulated on many of the prominent sports websites. On Thursday, next to a story about Game 2 of the Rockies/Diamondbacks series, MSNBC.com had a headline entitled “Is Anybody Watching?”
This is par for the course. Yes, the 3.6 rating was a record low, and the game was the least watched LCS game in history. However, the game aired on cable, which accounts for much of the poor rating. Certainly, there is the possibility the game could have drawn the same 3.6 on broadcast, especially considering how unappealing the match-up is from a market standpoint, but to ask the question “Is Anybody Watching” in relation to a game that drew the highest rating of the night on cable indicates an ignorance of the television ratings landscape.
One could also consider the 2007 NBA Finals. Much was made of the 6.2 average rating for the four game sweep, and how it indicated that the NBA was a dying sport. However, Game 4 of the series drew more viewers than the final round of the U.S. Open that aired during the same week. That U.S. Open included arguably the world’s most famous athlete, Tiger Woods, coming just short of winning another major title. But when one read any articles that week, the stories centered on how nobody was watching the NBA Finals, and how the U.S. Open saw a huge ratings jump. Which is true; the NBA Finals were a record low, and the U.S. Open saw a big increase in ratings. Still, it seems disingenuous to insinuate that Tim Duncan (or the NBA at large) is far less popular than Tiger Woods when more people tuned in to watch him win a championship than tuned in to watch Woods contend for one (at the U.S. Open) or win one (at the PGA Championship) this year.
Misrepresenting the facts.
Sometimes, people who are experts at the television ratings game can misinterpret the ratings — or, in the case of USA Today columnist Michael Hiestand, misrepresent them. In January, ABC aired Mavericks/Heat as its first NBA game of the regular season. The game drew a 2.5 overnight rating, which led Hiestand to write “Rematch of last year’s NBA finalists draws rating lower than some NFL exhibition games.”
That is true, of course. What Hiestand failed to point out was that NFL exhibition games draw better ratings than most sporting events. Had Hiestand turned that around and written NFL exhibition games draw better ratings than NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS (and the list goes on), he would have represented the facts more accurately.
This type of misrepresentation goes on often. Someone could pump out an article saying Major League Baseball is dead because Cowboys/Bills drew a better rating than Indians/Yankees (nevermind that the NFL draws significantly better ratings than any other sport). Someone could say that the NBA Finals is dead because the MLB All Star Game drew a better rating (nevermind that the MLB All Star Game was beating the NBA Finals even when Magic, Bird and Jordan were playing).
Greatness is not the norm.
There is also the problem of thinking great ratings are somehow supposed to be the norm.
Many writers hearken back to 1998, when the NBA Finals averaged an 18.7 rating, when writing articles on how poorly the Finals are performing today. What many writers fail to realize is that the only reason the NBA Finals drew ratings of 16 and 18 from 1996 to 1998 is the presence of Michael Jordan. Casual fans came to watch Jordan, not the NBA. When Jordan left, many of the casual fans left, and the ratings plummeted.
When the Yankees and Red Sox played in the ALCS in 2004, and when the Red Sox went on to play in the subsequent World Series, Major League Baseball ratings hit their highest point in several years. Casual fans were interested in the big-market rivalry between New York and Boston and the perceived “Curse of the Bambino”, which led to huge, inflated ratings. When the Yankees and Red Sox were eliminated in the Division Series the next season, the casual fans tuned out, and ratings plummeted.
No sport is as popular as its best rating. The 1998 NBA Finals averaged an 18.7 rating because people loved Michael Jordan, not the NBA. The Super Bowl averages a 40 rating because it has become a cultural event — that now has very little to do with the game at hand.
Shrinking with time.
What some sportswriters also fail to recognize is that ratings are down — for everything. Earlier in the year, NBC set a record low for average viewership in a week (and that week did not include any Stanley Cup Finals games). Nightly newscasts have also set record lows. In general, the fragmented television landscape leads to countless options for viewers and leaves appointment programs, like the World Series and NBA Finals, as an option for a smaller amount of consumers.
Since 1999, ratings for the World Series and NBA Finals have fallen 37% and 45%, respectively. During the same span, the combined average viewership of the Big Four (ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX) during the fall television season has declined by 20% — from 12 million viewers in 1998-99 to 9.6 million viewers in 2006-07.
While the decline for the networks overall may not be as sharp as the decline for some of the crown jewel events in sports, it does indicate the general trend of falling ratings on broadcast television.
Conclusion.
Reporting sports television ratings is not necessarily detrimental by itself. However, the analysis of those ratings is often laden with value-judgments (e.g, the NHL is inadequate because its ratings are low), and not put into proper context. Sportswriters often make too much of record low ratings, and often forget the fact that ratings are down for all programming — and that the high ratings of previous years may have had more to do with scintillating personalties (e.g., Jordan) than the actual sport itself.
Put together, this inaccurate analysis leads to the perception that sports are faring worse than they actually are. This perception likely does not have too much of an effect on the bottom line for sports leagues, but it does help create a hierarchy where certain sports perceived to be unpopular, such as the aforementioned NHL — and even to some extent baseball and the NBA — are then treated in the media as such.
This can be remedied by better reporting on sports television ratings — by everyone from sportswriters in general to those in the blogosphere (including this site). Certainly, reporting on television ratings is not going to kill sports, or even harm sports to a significant extent. However, the reporting can be improved.
