I know the Brett Favre stuff is finally settling down, and that you probably don’t want anymore piled on, but I found this angle pretty interesting. CBS killed in the ratings game last year on the shoulders of the record breaking Patriots. Almost every game they played received a ton of viewers up until the end of the year when they had to play the Jets and Dolphins, before the Giants game. If the Pats had any other good teams in their division they would have destroyed ratings records.
Enter on, Brett Lorenzo Favre….
Unless Favre fails to make even a middling improvement in the Jets’ 4-12 record in 2007, CBS can look forward to a nice ratings bump, at least early in the season.
“Even if the Jets aren’t good, they become that much more interesting to watch in New York, if nowhere else,” said Rick Gentile, a former veep at CBS Sports who is currently director of the Seton Hall Sports Poll. “Compared to what they’ve had, they now have something to watch.”
Citing CBS as a “clear beneficiary” of the deal, he speculated that “New York’s ratings could go up 15%, and 15% of a 10 million person market is a nice chunk.” In any event, he added, “It will improve it by some percentage, and some percentage of the New York market is just big numbers. So the advertisers have to be ecstatic.”
The Jets are currently scheduled to play only two games on national television, a Monday nighter on ESPN at San Diego on Sept. 22 and a Thursday-night game Nov. 13 vs. their archrivals the Patriots on the NFL Network.
In fact every single network wins out. Now NBC can use Favre’s Jets as a flex option after the Cowboys, Pats, and Colts six game primetime windows have been used up. The Jets still provided some crappy matchups near the end of the season (Dolphins and Bills), but there’s still the option for NBC to use games against the Seahawks and Broncos (who beat Favre in Super Bowl XXXII), if CBS doesn’t protect them.
The Pats and Jets have also already been bumped up to CBS’ 4:15 slot in week two. Now if they could work on getting the craptastic Ravens off my TV every Sunday (I know it’s not happening, but a boy can dream right?).
Brett Favre frenzy hits New York (Variety)
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