Some interesting numbers published in the Sports Business Journal today – the network partners of the NFL are seeing a roller coaster year in terms of pregame ratings.
While pregame shows have been on the decline in terms of relevancy and potential insight with the advent of this thing called the internet, they are more proliferate than ever before. Seemingly every network has hours upon hours of NFL studio shows on Sunday mornings (ahem, cheap plug for our continuing series reviewing each and every one of those shows).
So far this season through the first 7 weeks there hasn’t been one trend to set in on the pregame ratings front – some of those networks are seeing ratings increases while others are seeing declines.
The big winner right now is the retooled NFL Today on CBS, who has seen its audience grow 12% this season and slightly close the gap on Fox NFL Sunday, who is down 2%. Fox has long held a lead over CBS in the Sunday morning pregame shows thanks in large part to being on in the more lucrative NFC markets. The NFL Today saw big offseason changes trading out Dan Marino and Shannon Sharpe for Tony Gonzalez and Bart Scott.
The other winner is NFL Network’s GameDay Morning – up 13% in viewership, although its total numbers are still well behind the competition. On the other hand, ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown has seen the largest decrease of 12%. Football Night in America is relatively unchanged, down a tick of 1%. Here’s the numbers:
Football Night in America: 8.32 million
Fox NFL Sunday: 4.75 million
CBS NFL Today: 3.53 million
ESPN Sunday NFL Countdown: 1.96 million
NFL Network GameDay Morning: 590k
It’ll be intriguing to chart these numbers throughout the season. CBS has to be pleased with the major changes they made to what had been a stale lineup on their pregame show. Might ESPN be pressured into making some changes of their own if their ratings don’t turn around?
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