This abomination comes on the heels of ABC using Robert Randolph and the Family Band (2003), Justin Timberlake (2004), the Black Eyed Peas (2004), Destiny’s Child (2005), Rob Thomas (2005) and Tom Petty (2006) in previous NBA opens. And, of course, it comes on the heels on NBC’s sad pick of Pink to sing its Sunday Night Football open. Mike Pearl, the man in charge of the awful production of NBA games on ABC:
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.
Last weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series race from Talladega (Ala.) averaged a 2.1 rating and 3.97 million viewers on FOX, down a tick in ratings and 2% in viewership from last year (2.2, 4.04M). Excluding 2020, when the race was delayed several weeks and then postponed due to rain, Carson Hocevar’s win was the least-watched spring Talladega race since it began airing on FOX in 2001. Read more
Monday’s Pistons-Magic first round NBA playoff Game 4 averaged a combined 5.4 million viewers on NBC across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, up 155% from a Nielsen-only audience of 2.1 million for a non-exclusive Cavaliers-Heat Game 4 on TNT Sports last year. Read more
Coverage of the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs was averaging 1.15 million viewers through the first five days, up 76% from last year and the highest average on record at that point of the postseason. This year’s average is up 30% from the previous high of 887,000 in 2012, and up 39% from the previous high during the current media rights deal — 832,000 in 2024.
Last Sunday’s Wisconsin-Ohio State NCAA women’s hockey national title game averaged 39,000 viewers on ESPNU, down 9% from the same matchup last year (43K).
The NCAA women’s basketball tournament was averaging 628,000 viewers through the first two rounds, up 4% from last year (602K) and behind the Caitlin Clark-fueled levels of 2024 as the highest average since 2009. Note that the 4% increase is well within the margin that can be explained entirely by Nielsen’s shift to “Big Data + Panel” methodology. Read more
Last Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race from Darlington (S.C.) averaged a 1.3 rating and 2.43 million viewers on FS1, up a tick in ratings but down 1% in viewership from Homestead-Miami on the same weekend last year (1.2, 2.46M). Read more
The NBC family of networks averaged 1.1 million viewers for the recently-concluded Milan-Cortina Winter Paralympics, per a combination of Nielsen and Adobe Analytics — up 24% from the previous edition in Beijing four years ago. That is outside the range that would be explained by Nielsen methodological changes. Read more
