NFL TV Ratings Crash Because . . .

Submitted by Meteor Man on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 6:56am

A.) Mike Ditka Eats Quiche

Mike Ditka is replaced on ESPN Sunday NFL Countdown one week after calling Obama the 'worst president we've ever had

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3484065/Mike-Ditka-replaced-ESPN...

Mike Ditka: 'There has been no oppression in the last 100 years'

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/mike-ditka-no-oppression-100-...

B.) The Arizona Cardinals Drafted Hillary Clinton For Quarterback

C.) Boring Games and Poor Officiating:

https://www.bloggingtheboys.com/2016/11/5/13502310/is-nfl-officiating-ge...

D.) It"s Really Still 2016:

Viewership for NBC's "Sunday Night Football," the premiere game of the week, is down 13% compared to last year. ESPN's "Monday Night Football" is down 17%. The Sunday afternoon games on Fox and CBS are down 3-4%, according to Nielsen data.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/08/media/tv-nfl-ratings-down/index.html

E.) Greedy NFL Owners:

As noted by The Ringer, the rookie salary scale instituted in 2011 is largely to blame for the lacking on-field product. Because NFL owners were tired of giving huge contracts to unproven rookies, players’ initial four-year contracts were drastically reduced

http://awfulannouncing.com/2016/why-are-nfl-ratings-down-the-leagues-gre...

F.) Don't Know & Don't Care

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#NFL Ratings #Kaepernick
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Submitted by Lookout on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 7:18am
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Was that tongue in check, or are you taking the knee?

I've never liked football, but each to their own. Always pissed me off how much time, money, and energy was dedicated to football when I was teaching and saw other needs....like art and music. Of course here in Alabama, football is second only to God...you know, Roy Moore's God that hates black folks, wants to keep poor people from having health care. and loves destroying the environment for more oil and trees (Alabama is controlled by the timber industry).

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by Arrow on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 7:30am
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F+) Know and choose not to care.(except for its promotion of 'militarism' in our culture).

I'm a baseball & ice hockey guy.

George explains it so much better:

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I want a Pony!

Submitted by Big Al on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 9:34am
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are clearly cherrypicking. The league hit it's peak and because of all these problems is coming back down. I think all pro sports leagues have become over saturated, over paid, and over hyped and have largely become spectator sports for the top 20%, the only ones who can afford to go to the games.

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Submitted by Dr. John Carpenter on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 3:17pm

@Big Al Your comment makes me think about a couple of articles I've seen in the last 5-10 years that took issue with the conventional wisdom that a city needs an NFL franchise for business reasons. In at least three articles, the number crunchers determined the tax breaks and straight up giveaways to NFL owners were never justified by any kind of return on investment.

Aside from the deals being horribly lopsided in favor of football, I seem to recall talk of a "ratings slump" in each of these articles. I think you are absolutely right. We've passed peak football. Since cities seem to willing to support the league with taxpayer dollars, I wonder how long until they too go looking for their bailout.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Submitted by Ellen North on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 11:20pm

@Big Al

Well, they probably want cover for the fact that at least some people may have been boycotting because someone's pacific protest against routine police murders of unarmed citizens got such an ugly and career-ruining response - evidently in the interest of redirecting the publicity raised regarding that long-running horror.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Submitted by doh1304 on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 10:24am

when a sportswriter named Mike Conlin wrote that the AC Neilson corp started reporting the ratings of individual games rather than just "the package" and discovered that when the Kilgore Rangerettes performed at halftime ratings went up 15%. Conlin argued that since the Rangerettes only performed at Dallas Cowboy home games that that would pressure officials to rig games in favor of the Cowboys so that they would have home games in the playoffs. That year the Cowboys won 4 games in a row thanks to pass interference calls in the last two minutes, in two cases the "offending" player was laying on the ground thirty yards away, in one case the ball was thrown into the stands, and in one case the Cowboy receiver punched the "offending" player in the face.
BTW, The Cowboys offered to fly the Rangerettes to away games the next year, but the band director of Kilgere College refused, so the Cowboys formed the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.

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On to Biden since 1973

Submitted by Lily O Lady on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 11:19am
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Kapernec(sp?) who is being made an example by the NFL. All the other stuff is distraction.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

Submitted by k9disc on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 12:18pm
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Seriously, when there's 2m30s left, you've got 1 hour of "football" to watch.

The crass commercial nature destroyed the game and destroyed the stadiums. Between the corporate naming convention and $200 seats, they killed their fans passion.

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

Submitted by Meteor Man on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 1:21pm
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Yep. This was snark. The flag waving patriotic bullshit does not explain the ratings dive in 2006. Baseball and football TV ratings have both tanked in recent years, because of multiple inter-related factors.

This is precisely like the "NASCAR Dad" narrative from Bill Clinton's impeachment clusterfuck. The unified "NASCAR Dads Outrage" over Clinton's sexual escapades was entirely manufactured "fake news" courtesy of Fox News.

Faux outrage and information smog are the universal coin of the Capitalist realm. Emily's list, the American Cancer Society and anti-tobacco groups, Cenk and TYT, TOS, the NRA and KKK, "family values" and the "Freedom Caucus" etc., etc., etc. ad nauseum.

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Submitted by Not Henry Kissinger on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 1:22pm
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C.) Boring Games and Poor Officiating:

Slows down an already dull sport to a speed that makes golf seem exciting.

Not to mention the whole concept of electronic monitoring of referrers inherently criticizes them and the product by assuming they are not competent to properly officiate games on their own.

PLUS: they still get the calls wrong as often as they get them right.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

Submitted by Not Henry Kissinger on Mon, 10/16/2017 - 1:32pm
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American Football is probably the closest athletic metaphor for organized warfare there is. Yet traditional NFL fans (who skew right politically) are becoming increasingly disenchanted by militarism in general and the propagandizing of the sport in particular.

Browsing a couple right slanted boards during the Kapernick Kerfuffle, I was surprised at how many people specifically criticized the Superbowl flyovers, government payments to the league for promoting the military, and even the playing of the anthem itself at games.

Propagandizing of football has apparently been an ongoing issue with right wingers for awhile, so much so that no less a dove than John McCain felt the need to into the act:

As recently as 2015, the Department of Defense was doling out millions to the NFL for such things as military flyovers, flag unfurlings, emotional color guard ceremonies, enlistment campaigns, and — interestingly enough — national anthem performances. Additionally, according to Vice, the NFL’s policy on players standing for the national anthem also changed in 2009, with athletes “encouraged” thereafter to participate. Prior to that, teams were not given any specific instructions on the matter; some chose to remain in the locker room until after opening ceremonies were completed. (It’s unclear whether the policy change was implemented as a direct result of any Defense Department contracts.)

In 2015, Arizona Sens. Jeff Flake (R) and John McCain (R) revealed in a joint oversight report that nearly $5.4 million in taxpayer dollars had been paid out to 14 NFL teams between 2011 and 2014 to honor service members and put on elaborate, “patriotic salutes” to the military. Overall, they reported, “these displays of paid patriotism [were] included within the $6.8 million that the Department of Defense (DOD) [had] spent on sports marketing contracts since fiscal year 2012.”

The MIC loooves football because it's a great way to reach those who traditionally support its agenda as well as target younger fans for enlistment. Yet despite a demographic echo boom in military age population, recruitment is way down.

The propaganda backfired and hurt the league in the process. The League tried to make some amends to its fans ...

The NFL announced in May 2016 that it would refund $724,000 of the Defense Department payouts, which had been awarded for military “appreciate activities,” according to CNN Money. Defense Department spokespersons also confirmed that they had begun prohibiting military payouts for “patriotic ceremonies” in September 2015.

but Trump's bigly attempt to conflate criticism of police with criticism of the military has resurrected a lot of not so recently buried ghosts.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?