Ratings down for Saints' rout of Colts on MNF

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Jon Lewis

Jon Lewis has been covering the sports media industry on a daily basis since 2006 as the founder and main writer of Sports Media Watch. You can contact him here or on the social media websites X (Twitter) or Bluesky.

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Comments 2

Nate Johnson says:

7 years ago

Time for the 2nd annual of the Evaluation of the Thursday and Monday Night Football schedules. I understand MNF has one more game, but the motive of the evaluation is to check and see who had a better schedule in 2019 head to head on a weekly base (there’s no more TNF). The motive for this is to test the hypothesis that NFL give TNF better games than MNF because of the bad turmoil relationship with ESPN. I know this argument is probably pre-2019, but the NFL and FOX has a strong relationship through TNF so there’s another reason to test this hypothesis. Here we go!

Week 2: TNF had Bucs/Cats. MNF matchup was Browns/Jets. Browns was a hyped team in the offseason and preseason which gives ESPN the edge. The Jets were a sleeper team for many prior to the year which helped. The NFC South match-up was unique, but it was still Cam’s team and not Christian McCaffrey’s which was off to a bad start. Bucs was at the bottom of national interest which hurt TNF.

Week 3: TNF for the second consecutive week had a divisional match-up with no team making the postseason the previous year, and it was Titans/Jags. MNF had the Bears and Redskins. Redskins was off to a 0-2 start with no hope and had a Bears team that was off to a 1-1 start with no acknowledgement that they were the same team from last season. All that said, I have to give MNF the edge though because they had the better market, prestigous franchises showcasing. Titans/Jags didn’t give a memory like the same match-up on a Thursday Night the previous season.

Week 4: TNF finally starting to get better matchups because of the games being simulcast on FOX and Amazon Prime. Eagles/Packs was a huge Week 4 match-up and the ratings was among the all-time high in TNF history. TNF wins by a landslide because MNF had Bengals/Steelers which was a snoozer.

Week 5: This is a first tough one. Rams/Seahawks was unique and the game was excellent. The Browns was coming off of a loud victory against the Ravens having many believe they was on their way winning the AFC North. But, they was playing against the 49ers who had a surprising start. The hype was there for both match-ups, but TNF should get an edge because Browns was proven to be phonies following the MNF game and the Rams/Seahawks left us with something to keep on tabs with going forward. ESPN did earn some profit though.

Week 6: MNF wins because they had Lions/Packers. The Lions were divisional competitors prior to some of their key players being on the injured list. This was an excellent game to watch and lived up to the billing. TNF had Giants/Pats and while in the previous 3 regular season games that match-up came down deep in the 4th Quarter, the Giants was in a different direction with the Pats continuing to be contenders.

Week 7: Believe it or not, this is the first week both Primetime games were divisional match-ups. They were pretty weak though. Chiefs/Broncos gets the edge because Chiefs looked immortal in regards of winning their division. Broncos, on the other hand, looked like they were able to compete in the division after a slow start and probably needed this win to bring true belief from all other. This game was a blowout and remembered for Pat Mahomes injury on a QB sneak play. MNF had the Patriots, but they were playing against the Jets who had little to no hope even though they upset the Cowboys a week prior. TNF wins

Week 8: BYE Week blues kicking in. TNF had Skins/Vikes. MNF had Dolphins/Steelers. This is a toss up, but I’ll never understand why the Redskins have two Primetime games at this point. One probably was good enough so I’m going to punish TNF for thinking Case Keenum return to Minnesota and Kirk Cousins playing against his old team first time ever was a good idea. MNF wins.

Week 9: Halloween 2019 was on a Thursday and FOX gave us a 49ers/Cards. I won’t call it neither a trick or treat because soon enough the 49ers was a for real team to watch. The Cards was still in a thick of things and this was Kyler Murray’s first Primetime start in the NFL. MNF had the Cowboys/Giants and the Cowboys was coming off a BYE which meant no build up on them and the Giants was out of it. Advantage TNF even though MNF had the mighty Cowboys.

Week 10: MNF wins because they had Seahawks/49ers. That game is one of the most important games of the 2019 season. That game was also a instant classic and ought to be in MNF lore and ESPN should be happy that they were able to gain that for two consecutive seasons. FOX shouldn’t feel down about the Bolts/Raiders match-up. They were able to showcase the Raiders final home Primetime game. And the Raiders were believed to be an AFC playoff contender along with the Bolts. Seahawks/49ers was just too much.

Week 11: Let me emphasis that the results is based on build ups and team/game performance. With that said, I understand the 2019 Steelers/Browns TNF game will be remembered forever more than the Chiefs/Bolts MNF because of what happened at the end, but I would favor MNF because the Bolts season was on life support and a win in this game could’ve been helpful in turning their season around. Chiefs needed this win to maintain #1 in the division. Steelers/Browns coming in was focused more so on the Browns. Browns needed the win and for the Steelers while they overachieved 1 year after AB and with Big Ben being out, their flavor and want wasn’t there… until after the game.

Week 12: MNF wins even though the Ravens/Rams had a 45-6 final. Lamar Jackson has been the star for the 2019 NFL season. The Rams didn’t look like they were in position to return to the playoffs because of a stacked NFC, but were respected enough to tune in at least and believe they could compete against the Ravens. TNF had Colts/Texans. Both teams had this time were up and down. Unfortunately Deshaun Watson gleam wasn’t on the level of Lamar Jackson and the Colts didn’t have the same respect that the Rams recieved.

Week 13: Thanksgiving

Week 14: TNF wins by a lot. After Thanksgiving it’s about playoff seedings and positioning. Cowboys/Bears had that, where MNF’s Eagles/Giants didn’t even though the Eagles are in playoff contention. Also, the mighty Cowboys of course helps that out.

Week 15: To piggy bank off of Week 14, MNF wins due to playoff seedings and positioning. Jets were out of it and their opponent, the Ravens, had everyone believe that the road to the Super Bowl in the AFC will go through Baltimore even though the Ravens still needs to earn it. The Saints and 3 other teams has a shot of having Home-field Advantage in the NFC. The Colts were still alive going into the playoff in their matchup in New Orleans. I know the final was 34-7 and Brees stole the show and made those not remember any playoff implications, but still better than the Jets right?

Final Tally- MNF wins 8-5 (last season was the same tally with TNF winning).

CONCLUSION: What’s good about MNF is that Week 13 they had Vikes/Hawks which is another significant game for the 2019 season and this upcoming Monday they have Packs/Vikes which is huge for playoff seedings and positioning. This shows progress for them and I can only hope that this isn’t luck or fortune on their end and that this will close the book on the NFL giving ESPN some slack on MNF something I disagreed on. But this also shows how risky TNF can be. The fact they had better match-ups last season, but don’t this season indicates why CBS and NBC didn’t make a deal with them long term. TNF I doubt will ever go away, as a matter of fact if a decision had to be made between TNF and MNF I could see the league choosing TNF between the two, but it will continue to be a risk just like ABC’s MNF was and TNF prior to FOX having rights.
- Eric says:
  
  7 years ago
  
  @Nate I generally agree with you that MNF probably eeked out the better package this year compared to the TNF package. However, I think both packages are crap-shoots because you’re determining games for a national audience well before you know how good those games will actually turn out to be. It’s the gamble of taking a national package with no flex option. I think either network could’ve ended up with a killer package or a sleeper; they both got a mixed bag.
  
  I don’t agree with you that CBS and NBC backed away, I think Fox to this day realizes the value of having the NFL and came in with a solid, long-term bid that the NFL said yes to. I do think both CBS and NBC would have happily taken TNF in full for themselves, but they didn’t expect Fox to (once again) come in with such a competitive bid. What’s funny is, Fox built themselves into a network by getting the NFC package, and I think they’re positioning themselves well going forward with packages like TNF.
  
  Finally, regarding ESPN, they seem to go through rounds of arrogance where they basically tell their league partners how they should be grateful ESPN has any interest in them, and rounds of partnership where they work strongly with their league partners. ESPN and the NFL struggled under Skipper’s leadership; he clearly had a preference for the NBA, spending big money and focusing most of their personality-centric shows on the NBA with NBA people (Beadle, Rose, etc.). It happened before under Mark Shapiro who basically told the NHL they were worthless and should be happy to get any sort of bid from them, leading Versus to turn into what is now NBCSN. It appears that Jimmy Pitaro is in a cleanup and partnership mode, and it seems to be working. ESPN’s MNF slate has arguably gotten better, he got the draft away from Fox and basically does a super coverage across ESPN’s properties including ABC, and there seems to be significantly more NFL focus on a lot of the personality shows (and it appears it’s not coming at the expense of the other properties).
  
  I agree with you that if the NFL wanted to kill either MNF or TNF, they probably would kill MNF as TNF is the league’s baby, despite all the arguments against a short week. However, given that ESPN is cable only and easily gets 10mm viewers even with cord-cutting, it’s likely going no where. I think the bigger question is, will MNF and TNF get some sort of flexible scheduling in future contracts. For example, maybe around week 8, they can do a one-time flex of games for weeks 11-16, right around when they decide which games go to Saturday in week 16. That would at least help those two packages not get stuck with duds that had the potential to be huge games.