Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson (3) and center Justin Britt (68) walk to the field with arms linked after the national anthem had been played before an NFL football game between the Seahawks and the Tennessee Titans Sunday, Sept. 24, 2017, in Nashville, Tenn. Neither team was present on the field for the playing of the anthem. (AP Photo/Mark Zaleski) .
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In the wake of NFL teams making statements of protest during the national anthem, attention will likely be paid to the league’s television ratings as much as ever in 2017 — especially after ratings slid a bit last year.
Nationally, ratings again are a little bit down. According to the Associated Press, national ratings are off 11 percent from 2016 through three weeks after dipping about eight percent last season. Week 3’s ratings, however, were up year over year, per Sports Illustrated‘s Richard Deitsch. He Tweeted ….
Locally, though, ratings for Seahawks’ games are up slightly from last season, according to data from Q13 FOX, which has televised each of the first three games. According to their data, this year’s three games have an average rating of 39.0 while the ratings for the first three games last season was 38.6.
And the numbers are a pretty apples-to-apples comparison since each season each of the first three games were on Sunday afternoons in either the 1:05 p.m. or 1:25 p.m. time slot (games that air in the 10 a.m. Sunday slot typically do a little worse than those in the afternoon, and games on Sunday/Monday/Thursday nights often do better since they are in prime time and usually against more marquee opponents).
However, Sunday’s game against Tennessee was down some, with a rating of 35.8 after the first two games had an average of 40.7.
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A few more weekends like the last two and the Seahawks will be a rumour.
With DirectTV allowing refunds on NFL Packages and some advertisers getting reimbursed for viewership not hitting commitments things might start looking less rosy for the NFL. The NFL used to be the poster boy for how to run a league but they definitely fumbled on the kneeling thing, if they had addressed it properly last year it would never have gotten out of hand.
Yep, the NFL’s current misfortunes come down to five words – Colin Kaepernick taking a knee.