Source: http://www.morganwick.com/2013/11/
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 21:16:52+00:00

Document:
Here are the ratings for every NASCAR Sprint Cup race in the 2013 season.
Every race on Fox outrated every race on cable, and only one race on ABC was able to beat any Fox races, even the Sprint Unlimited, the Irwin Tools Night Race from Bristol. As usual, ratings slowly tapered off after the Daytona 500 with the four March races outrating every non-Daytona race.
Other than the Irwin Tools Night Race, the most-watched race not on Fox was the Coke Zero 400 on TNT, followed by the Bank of America 500, the most-watched Chase race, on ABC. ESPN’s most watched race, as usual, was the Brickyard 400, followed by the AdvoCare 500 from Atlanta. The most-watched Chase race on ESPN was the Ford 400, followed by the Camping World RV Sales 500. The Camping World RV Sales 301 was TNT’s most-watched race outside Daytona.
The least-watched Sprint Cup race on broadcast was ABC’s remaining race, the Federated Auto Parts 400 – which still outrated every Chase race on cable. The least-watched race overall was the Geico 400, but due to weather delays that race finished on ESPN2; the portion of the race that aired on ESPN had 3.623 million viewers, which would still make it the only points race with fewer viewers than the Sprint All-Star Race. The next-least viewed race was the Sylvania 300; the least-viewed non-Chase race was the Quaker State 400 on TNT, a race bumped to Sunday by rain, and the least-viewed non-Chase race to run at its normal time was the Cheez-It 355 at the Glen, followed by the Party in the Poconos 400 on TNT. The least-viewed non-Chase race on ESPN not on a road course was the Pure Michigan 400 – which outrated seven of the ten Chase races (and three of TNT’s six races).
Numbers for Sprint Cup races from Jayski.com. 18-49 numbers, when available, from The Futon Critic and TVbytheNumbers.
Selected game: Kansas City @ Denver.
Selected game: Denver @ New England.
Selected game: NY Giants @ Washington.
Selected game: Carolina @ New Orleans. A case could be made that this pick, as opposed to Lions-Eagles, actually wasn’t that far-thinking of the NFL, especially given the released protection on Chiefs-Broncos earlier in the year; see Week 16 below.
Prospects: The Steelers’ 5-6 record now has them tied for second in the division (and in a six-way tie for the six seed), while the Bengals aren’t looking quite so strong as they were. If the Steelers keep winning, this game may yet keep its spot, especially given the lack of other options.
Other possible games: Cardinals-Titans and Jets-Panthers both involve other teams in the six-way tie for the AFC six seed, and if we’re talking about 5-6 teams we have to talk about Saints-Rams.
Analysis: Honestly, at this point any other alternative probably needs the Steelers to lose to have any shot at overcoming the tentative game bias. Saints-Rams may be too lopsided to mention, and the best-case scenario for the other two might be 8-4 v. 6-6 with Bengals-Steelers sitting at 8-4 or 7-5 v. 5-7. That suggests it may be impossible to overcome the tentative game bias even if the Steelers do lose. Would NBC and the NFL be willing to overlook lopsidedness at 9-3 v. 6-6 going against 7-5 v. 5-7? It’s possible, especially with the TV-friendliness of the Saints, Jets, and Panthers, and especially if 6-6 is good enough for a playoff spot, but I’m not going to count on it.
Final prediction: Cincinnati Bengals @ Pittsburgh Steelers (no change).
Prospects: 8-3 v. 5-6; pretty lopsided, but the name value could still save it if it weren’t for the strong alternatives, and the Ravens are very much alive in the playoff hunt (then again, every AFC team that’s not the Texans – more on them in a bit – and Jags are).
Other possible games: CBS’ decision to protect Broncos-Texans over Colts-Chiefs was questionable at the time since the Texans definitely had the worst record of the four at 2-3 and seemed to be in a tailspin; now it seems to have given the Texans the kiss of death, as they haven’t won since (even losing to the freaking Jaguars!) and the Colts and Chiefs have only two-thirds as many losses between them as the Texans have themselves. But Colts-Chiefs will have to compete with the Saints-Panthers rematch, especially with CBS holding the doubleheader, and Cardinals-Seahawks and Bears-Eagles are waiting in the wings with Steelers-Packers a very dark horse.
Possible games: Eagles-Cowboys (the odds-on favorite), Packers-Bears, Ravens-Bengals, Jets-Dolphins, 49ers-Cardinals, Rams-Seahawks.
Fox Sports 1 had its best week since the relaunch this week, mostly on the back of Oklahoma-Baylor, NASCAR, and UFC. More encouraging than that is the raw number, which seems to put them closer to the class of ESPN, ESPN2, and NFL Network than the morass below them, even managing to beat ESPN2 outright in primetime. As I’ve said before, though, most of the effect on FS1’s studio shows, if any, shouldn’t turn up until next week, but you should be able to draw your own conclusions from Friday’s numbers. For now, let it be said that the record for most-watched edition of Fox Sports Live remains the one on launch night.
One thing that has stuck out for would-be fans of ESPN2’s Olbermann, especially on Awful Announcing, is that the show has regularly been shuffled back and forth, airing at random times and shuffling between ESPN2 and ESPNEWS. ESPN has scheduled it like any other postgame highlights show, but it’s really not; Olbermann doesn’t even do the show live when its first airing is delayed, so whatever highlights there are must be over by midnight no matter what. It doesn’t help that the show is affected by live events running long on both ESPN and ESPN2, because SportsCenter gets bumped to ESPN2 when live events on ESPN run long.
One thing sticks out: Friday’s first-run airing of Olbermann had more viewers than any other day of the week had in total. In fact, the top three track with the most popular first-run airings on ESPN2, and the other two didn’t have full-length first-run airings before 5 AM ET. Those three first-run airings did better than that 108,000 figure Olbermann had when it started on time. That episode totaled 372,000 viewers across all airings (actually having two re-airs with more viewers than its first-run episode), only barely beating Thursday of this week, and an average of 62,000 per airing, dragged down by ESPNEWS re-airs that topped out at 13,000, beating only two total re-airs from this week.
Of all first-run, daily studio shows on ESPN2, Olbermann’s ratings on its own only really compare favorably to ESPNFC – and considering how opinionated Olbermann is one would expect it to do numbers more on par with what the opinion and debate shows earlier in the day are getting. From that it’s tempting to conclude that the frustration of trying to find Olbermann when it’s on is in fact turning people away from the show – especially people who can’t switch to ESPNEWS for some reason (the first-run numbers from this Tuesday’s episode on ESPNEWS aren’t that far off from that 108,000 figure). But look at that 549,000 figure at the top of the chart again. That’s not just inflated by its lead-in; that’s over half of the lead-in provided by the Louisville-Connecticut football game, which had 1.041 million viewers. If ESPN likes having some sort of general-sports postgame show to retain the viewership from whatever ESPN2 had on that night, it’s clear that Olbermann is at least succeeding on that front, no matter how poor a fit it might seem. Especially if it can keep beating Fox Sports Live.
Prospects: 2-8 v. 5-5. Ouch.
Analysis: It’s Panthers-Saints. It’s Cam Newton v. Drew Brees. It’s a team I’ve been fascinated by ever since they rode the league’s most exciting offense Newton’s rookie season to a 6-10 record, making it inevitable they would go defense with their first-round pick in the draft, only to have Luke Kuechly’s Defensive Rookie of the Year season ruined by Newton’s sophomore slump, but now are in prime position to make the playoffs and could take the lead in the division with a win. It’s Riverboat Ron v. Bountygate Sean. It’s Carrie Underwood blandly singing “Panthers and the Saints, a division showdown” (seriously, “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night” is no “Are You Ready for some Football”, but at least Faith Hill didn’t seem like she was going through the motions singing the lines that were written for someone else and actually seemed like she wasn’t completely incongruous singing about football even though Underwood has dated Tony Romo in the past). And perhaps most importantly, it’s a battle between two teams with as many losses between them as the Eagles have by themselves with the division lead on the line. What could keep this game from being flexed in is that other Panthers games could also be flexed in each of the next two weeks, including the return match of this game, so the existence of Lions-Eagles as a safety valve may cause the NFL to hold off for now, but that would be more likely if CBS had protected Colts-Chiefs in two weeks instead of Broncos-Texans, and even then I still wouldn’t pick against this game.
Final prediction: Carolina Panthers @ New Orleans Saints.
Prospects: The Steelers’ 4-6 record now has them tied for second in the division, while the Bengals aren’t looking quite so strong as they were. If the Steelers keep winning, this game may yet keep its spot, especially given the lack of other options.
Other possible games: Jets-Panthers is the only game not involving a team below .500 (there’s a comment on the Last-Minute Remarks post telling me to look out for Seahawks-Giants if the Giants keep winning, but not only would that require the Seahawks to lose as well to keep from being horribly lopsided, it would also require the Steelers to lose more to overcome the tentative game bias).
Prospects: 7-3 v. 4-6; pretty lopsided, but the name value could still save it if it weren’t for the strong alternatives, and the Ravens are very much alive in the playoff hunt (then again, every AFC team that’s not the Texans – more on them in a bit – and Jags are).
Other possible games: CBS’ decision to protect Broncos-Texans over Colts-Chiefs was questionable at the time since the Texans definitely had the worst record of the four at 2-3 and seemed to be in a tailspin; now it seems to have given the Texans the kiss of death, as they haven’t won since and the Colts and Chiefs have half as many losses between them as the Texans have themselves. But Colts-Chiefs will have to compete with the Saints-Panthers rematch, and Cardinals-Seahawks and Bears-Eagles are waiting in the wings.
Possible games: Eagles-Cowboys (the odds-on favorite), Packers-Bears, Jets-Dolphins, 49ers-Cardinals, Rams-Seahawks.
Near as I can tell, ESPNU first became Nielsen-rated just over a year ago, just before the start of November 2012. Here are the 500 (technically 505) most-watched programs over the course of that first year of Nielsen rating from October 29, 2012 through October 27, 2013. A more up-to-date list that will be maintained on a weekly basis will be found here. All numbers from Son of the Bronx.
Prospects: 4-6 v. 3-7. The name value and NFC East tire fire helps, but these are the worse two teams in the division.
Other possible games mentioned on last week’s Watch and their records: Cardinals (6-4)-Eagles (6-5), Titans (4-6)-Colts (7-3), Dolphins (5-5)-Jets (5-5), Bengals (7-4)-Chargers (4-6).
Final prediction: New York Giants @ Washington RG3’s (no change).
I’m leaving Da Blog Poll up for another week and doing this for at least another two weeks so I can measure the impact on FS1 of the Oklahoma-Baylor game last week, which finally broke the FS1 record held by the launch-night UFC card and became the first FS1 program to crack the 2-million-viewer barrier. But be warned, the SSS the next two weeks could be pretty chaotic.
He claims that FS1 is doing well in total day because of UEFA Champions League soccer, which, while it does better than the normal timeslot occupants at 3 and 4 ET, is barely a blip on the radar compared to FS1’s other sports events. It’s far more likely that FS1’s strong total-day performance has more to do with college football and NASCAR practice and qualifying.
He claims that Crowd Goes Wild has consistently performed well compared to other daily afternoon and evening studio shows on FS1, NBCSN, and MLB Network, going toe to toe for the top spot with Intentional Talk among the shows he compares that aren’t NASCAR Race Hub… ignoring the fact that Crowd Goes Wild’s ratings are ridiculously, insanely inflated when it has NASCAR practice or qualifying as a lead-in.
Those two things, plus the dominance of Race Hub, point to one undeniable fact: a big chunk of FS1’s audience are still disproportionately holdovers from the Speed days, and at least at this point, fans of other sports have not yet found the channel. Yes, even UFC fans; they came out for launch night and have provided some of FS1’s most popular programming, and in fact Lucia also compared UFC Tonight to the daily shows and it wound up coming in second, but that launch night card wasn’t even the most-watched card on cable of 2013, and ratings for The Ultimate Fighter are way down compared to last season on FX. That Speed did well enough that the rest of the FS1 schedule is still comparable to NBCSN and MLBN doesn’t really hide that.
What can be said about FS1 compared to its competition?
FS1 is fairly consistently placing fourth in total day and primetime behind ESPN, ESPN2, and NFL Network… except this week when it fell to sixth in total day behind the Comcast networks.
Fox Soccer Daily is doing poorly compared to ESPNFC later in the day, which may sound like a bad comparison until you realize that ESPNFC is one of the worst-performing shows on ESPN2.
When insulated from NASCAR lead-ins, Crowd Goes Wild is running neck-in-neck with Pro Football Talk, but that may say more about the problems PFT and NBCSN in general are having. CGW could not compete with Intentional Talk during baseball season. Fox Football Daily, meanwhile, seems to lose substantially from its CGW lead-in, which means it’s substantially behind PFT and any other regularly scheduled show in its time slot.
First-run airings of Fox Sports Live generally don’t fall much below 30,000, which is roughly at CGW’s level, but Sundays can be very vulnerable, at least during football season. In general FSL is very lead-in-dependent, and its re-airs tend to be susceptible to random fluctuations; numbers can get truly pathetic for late-night and early-morning re-airs.
Fox College Saturday was consistently beating college football pre-game coverage on ESPNU… except for this week.
This week, without NASCAR RaceDay or other NASCAR coverage as a lead-in, Fox NFL Kickoff still attracted over 100,000 viewers. That put it behind other NFL pregame shows (including Fantasy Football Now, bumped to ESPNEWS for the New York City Marathon, NFL Gameday First earlier in the day, and the Saturday morning ESPN2 airing of NFL Matchup), but did beat re-airs of ESPN2 programming on ESPNEWS earlier and re-airs of NBA Gametime on NBATV. Of course, that’s sort of damning with faint praise, but it did manage to beat Morning Drive on Golf Channel earlier.
Prospects: 3-6 v. 3-6. The name value and NFC East tire fire helps, but these are the worse two teams in the division.
Other possible games: Thanksgiving weekend, paucity of good games; Cardinals-Eagles is the only game that doesn’t involve a team with a losing record. Titans-Colts, Dolphins-Jets, and Bengals-Chargers become options if you look at 4-5 teams.
Analysis: None of these games offer much in the way of starpower, and none of them are so much better as to overcome the tentative game bias. Even discounting lopsidedness and name value, is 6-3 v. 4-5 really that much better than 3-6 v. 3-6? That’s not to say this game won’t get flexed out, but if both of its participants win this week there’s no way this game isn’t keeping its spot, it might be able to keep its spot with just one team winning, and the 4-5 teams need to win regardless. Still, you have to at least look at a 6-4 v. 5-5 game, as Bengals-Chargers would be (and as Titans-Colts could be even with a Colts loss), if the alternative is 3-7 v. 3-7.
Prospects: 2-7 v. 5-4. Doesn’t look good.
Other possible games: Panthers-Saints is looking very strong to give Cam Newton his first NBC game with only one game separating the two for the NFC South crown, and Lions-Eagles is also a dark horse.
Prospects: If I told you before the season that this game would be 6-4 v. 3-6 after Week 9, and you didn’t have the bye week schedule on hand, would you have ever guessed that the Steelers would be the 3-6 team?
Other possible games: Jets-Panthers is the only game not involving a team below .500.
Prospects: 7-2 v. 4-5; pretty lopsided, but the name value could still save it if it weren’t for the strong alternatives, and the Ravens might be climbing back into this thing.
Other possible games: Very surprised CBS chose to protect Broncos-Texans, a game involving a team that was 2-3 and in a tailspin at the time (and hasn’t won since), instead of Colts-Chiefs, two teams now leading their respective divisions and with three losses between them. Perhaps CBS had its eye more on getting Pats-Ravens back. But Colts-Chiefs will have to compete with the Saints-Panthers rematch, and Cardinals-Seahawks and Bears-Eagles are waiting in the wings.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.