Sports Media Watch presents 20 notable sports media stories of the year 2010. Today, #10-#6, including legal trouble for a prominent QB, record lows for baseball’s crown jewel, record highs for football and futbol, and the departure of a long-time broadcast team.
#10: Roethlisberger Sexual Assault Allegations
In March, two-time Super Bowl champion Ben Roethlisberger was accused of sexually assaulting a young adult in Milledgeville, GA, less than a year after being sued for sexual assault in Nevada. Though he was not charged ? in either case ? the perception that the 28-year old pro athlete took advantage of a ?highly intoxicated? (nytimes.com, 4/13/10) woman below the legal drinking age certainly did not help his image.
The D.A. involved in the case suggested Roethlisberger was immature: ?Ben, grow up. Come on, you’re supposed to stand for something. I mean, you’re a leader, you should be a role model? (post-gazette.com, 4/13/10). FOX NFL analyst Terry Bradshaw hammered Roethlisberger on a number of occasions, saying in September that the Steelers ?should have dumped? him (usatoday.com 9/12/10).
With that said, Roethlisberger seemed to get off fairly easy ? at least compared to other athletes in 2010. Consider the fact that LeBron James continues to get blasted on a daily basis for his five-month-old television special, with writers often questioning his character. Consider that Tiger Woods and Brett Favre, whose actions were unsavory at best, have been held up as objects of ridicule. By contrast, Roethlisberger received what amounts to about three weeks worth of slaps on the wrist before the story was eventually forgotten ? both by the media and by fans.
#9: World Series Ties Record-Low
As soon as the Rangers defeated the Yankees in Game 6 of the ALCS, rumblings of record low World Series ratings began in earnest. It didn?t matter that the League Championship Series put up good numbers, averaging its largest audience in three years. Once the Yankees were gone, all hopes of good World Series ratings went with them.
As much as fans and media express their dislike of much-hyped, big-market teams, they don?t often tune in to watch anybody else. The Yankees’ 2009 World Series drew the best numbers since 2004 ? and that ’04 series involved their heated, high-profile rivals, the Red Sox. But as much as the Yankees? absence would hurt World Series ratings, surely a Rangers/Giants matchup ? pitting the #5 and #6 television markets ? would at least top the World Series record low set in 2008 (PHI/TB: 8.4, 13.6 mil). Unfortunately for MLB, that was not the case.
FOX suffered through a five-game Rangers/Giants series which featured the second-lowest rated Game 1 in history (8.9), the second-lowest rated Game 2 (8.5), the second-lowest rated Game 3 (6.7), the lowest rated Game 4 (9.0), and the lowest rated Game 5 (8.8). The series tied Phillies/Rays as the lowest rated World Series ever, but at least managed to average approximately 700,000 more viewers. While the numbers were not quite as bad as was portrayed (an 8.4 rating is good, relative to other sports), the series was not a high point for Major League Baseball, which has now either set or tied a record low for the World Series in seven of the past thirteen years.
#8: Miller/Morgan Dumped From Sunday Night
ESPN let go of one of the longest-running announcing teams in sports in November, declining to renew the contracts of MLB broadcasters Jon Miller and Joe Morgan. Miller and Morgan had been part of ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball broadcast team since 1990, calling playoff and World Series action for ESPN Radio in addition to their TV duties.
Morgan, a lightning rod for criticism among some segments of the sports-viewing public, reacted coldly to the move: ?I was not surprised by ESPN?s decision. They have been taking ?Sunday Night Baseball? in a different direction the last two years and I was not comfortable with that direction? (bats.blogs.nytimes.com, 11/10/10). Morgan was likely referring to ESPN?s use of a second analyst on Sunday night games in 2008 (Steve Phillips) and 2009 (Orel Hershiser).
Though it had been rumored before, ESPN?s decision to finally let go of Miller and Morgan was a bit of a risky one. Miller had been honored earlier in the year with the Baseball Hall of Fame?s Ford C. Frick Award, and Morgan ? for all his detractors ? was one of the most prominent TV analysts of the past two decades. The network decided to replace them with well-regarded play-by-play voice Dan Shulman and Baseball Tonight?s Bobby Valentine, with Hershiser remaining as a holdover from the Miller/Morgan days. Whether that team will have the same kind of staying power ? or will generate the same level of criticism ? as the Miller/Morgan duo remains to be seen.
#7: Super Bowl XLIV Most-Viewed Program Ever
The series finale of M*A*S*H had been the most-viewed program in U.S. television history for nearly three decades entering 2010, with a still-staggering audience of 105.970 million viewers. However, the Super Bowl had begun to creep up on the longtime gold standard in recent years. In both 2008 and 2009, the Super Bowl earned the second-largest TV audience ever, second only to M*A*S*H ? and with Super Bowl viewership increasing each year since 2006, it was only a matter of time before the record would fall.
Still, the record-shattering 106,480 million viewers for this year?s Saints/Colts Super Bowl was slightly surprising. The game?s 7.8% increase in viewership from the previous year was the largest such rise for the Super Bowl in over ten years. Based on previous years, when viewership rose by 2.7% (2007), 4.6% (2008) and 1.3% (2009), it seemed as if just breaking 100,000 million viewers at all would be the next milestone ? with the all-time record perhaps a year or two away.
Surprising or not, the record audience for Saints/Colts marked a milestone moment in television history. Not just for the record, and not even just for the novelty of being only the second program in history to top 100,000 million viewers. The record ? and the fact that the NFL now owns four of the five largest TV audiences ever ? essentially cemented the National Football League as the biggest phenomenon to ever hit American television.
#6: World Cup Success
The 2010 World Cup was a rousing success for soccer in the United States, scoring some of the largest non-NFL sports audiences of the year on broadcast and cable. Numerous ratings records were broken ? and not just once, but multiple times.
ESPN devoted ?unprecedented hype? (usatoday.com, 5/25/10) to the World Cup, sending some of its biggest, most respected names to cover the event ? Bob Ley, Mike Tirico and Chris Fowler. SportsCenter featured daily World Cup segments. Outside the Lines covered all aspects of the tournament ? even unsavory ones, such as South Africa?s apartheid past and the ongoing crisis of human trafficking. An argument could be made that ESPN devoted more attention to the World Cup during the month of June than to ABC?s Lakers/Celtics NBA Finals.
That hype paid off in the form of some of the biggest soccer audiences in American TV history, aided by Team USA?s success. Team USA?s first match against England drew an audience of 17.1 million viewers on ABC and Univision, the second-largest audience ever for a soccer match in the United States. That was topped by their Round of 16 match against Ghana, which drew 19.4 million ? the largest soccer audience in U.S. history. That was, in turn, surpassed by the Spain/Netherlands final, whose audience of 24.3 million viewers easily broke the USA/Ghana record.
Records also fell for individual networks, with Univision airing its most-viewed World Cup ever, and four of its five most-viewed individual World Cup telecasts ever. ESPN/ABC averaged the most viewers ever for the World Cup on English-language television, with ABC earning the two-largest audiences ever for men?s soccer on a single network (USA/Ghana and Spain/Netherlands), and ESPN setting a network record for USA/Algeria. While some wondered whether the success of the World Cup would be the catalyst to making soccer a popular sport in the U.S., the numbers seem to indicate that the sport is already a big draw ? at least for its biggest event.
The top five stories will be posted at some point during the remainder of the week.
