Twenty media thoughts off Week 3 of the NFL season:
1. If you asked sports television executives which NFL players they were focused on prior to the 2019 NFL regular season, Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph would not have ranked high on that list. That’s changed significantly with the season-ending injury to Ben Roethlisberger. Pittsburgh has long been one of the NFL’s best television draws — especially for CBS (which owns the AFC package) along with New England — and those who make their living with sports television ratings place the Steelers somewhere in the Top 5 among NFL national draws behind Dallas and Green Bay and parallel with the Patriots and the Bears (when they are good).
Advertisem*nt
Rudolph acquitted himself well on Sunday for a first-time starter (14 of 26 for 147 yards, two touchdowns and one interception) but Pittsburgh lost 24-20 to San Francisco on a late Jimmy Garoppolo touchdown pass to Dante Pettis. The Steelers are now 0-3.
So here’s what’s coming for the NFL and the Steelers: The team plays on ESPN next Monday night against the Bengals, a Sunday night game on NBC against the Chargers on Oct. 13 and another Monday night game (hide your eyes) against the Dolphins on Oct. 28. Then comes a national doubleheader game on CBS against the Rams on Nov. 10, a Thursday Night game on Fox against the Browns on Nov. 14, and another 4:25 p.m. doubleheader game on CBS against the Browns on Dec. 1. That’s a ton of premium windows. One TV sports exec predicted CBS’ NFL ratings this season will come down to how long New England or Kansas City can stay unbeaten if Pittsburgh goes south. Over the first two weeks of the season, CBS had averaged 15.311 million viewers, up 4 percent versus last year’s 14.683 million.
2. Warren Sharp normally specializes in football analytics, but the NFL analyst sent out a tweet on Sept. 16 that really opened my eyes. Sharp, of Sharp Football Analysis, listed the potential starting quarterbacks for “Monday Night Football” and Thursday Night Football from Week 3 to Week 14 and…wow.
Future MNF & TNF QB:
Wk 3: Minshew, Mariota, Keenum, Trubisky
Wk 4: Rudolph, Dalton
Wk 6: Eli/Jones
Wk 7: Flacco, Siemian/Falk
Wk 8: Keenum, Rudolph, Fitzmagic/Rosen
Wk 9: Eli/Jones
Wk 11: Rudolph
Wk 12: Brissett
Wk 13: Bridgewater?, Trubisky
Wk 14: Trubisky, Eli/Jones— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) September 17, 2019
The NFL has always marketed the league through quarterbacks — Bradshaw vs. Staubach. Manning vs. Brady. Wentz vs. Mahomes. There’s always been a correlation between star quarterbacks and viewership, especially if the star quarterback plays in a big market. Now comes a serious challenge for the league with Roethlisberger and Andrew Luck (retired) out for the season, Drew Brees, and Nick Foles out for weeks, and Sam Darnold out indefinitely but still producing incredible memes. NFL games have averaged 16.25 million viewers through Week 2, up 3 percent from 15.78 million at the same point last season. We’ll see how the QB injuries impact those numbers.
Advertisem*nt
3. On this note, I think viewers would benefit from both “Thursday Night Football” and “Monday Night Football” being able to flex one Sunday game prior to Week 13. Let CBS protect its best game and don’t change the SNF schedule, but this would provide a better game in those windows when a significant quarterback gets injured (which often happens).
4. It was interesting to look back on Week 1 to see what NFL pregame show analysts said about Antonio Brown. I chronicled those within my piece after the opening Sunday.
Fox’s NFL Sunday crew was harder on Brown than any other pregame show. This Sunday, Fox did a quick recap to update the Brown story and showed the tweets that Brown sent, including those critical of Patriots owner Robert Kraft and the NFL. Insider Jay Glazer updated the story, followed by analyst Jimmy Johnson saying he spent time with Brown’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus but did not add much insight about that meeting.
5. Not that I would define “The NFL Today” as pro-Brown, but analysts Boomer Esiason and Nate Burleson proclaimed Brown shrewd (Burleson, in fact, called him “a genius”) for engineering his way to the Patriots prior to opening week.Esiason and Burleson were obviously way off, as were Tony Romo and Phil Simms who both predicted Brown would be a big success in New England. (Said Simms: “For all the New England haters and all the Antonio Brown haters, I got some bad news for you: It’s going to work out great in New England,” Simms said. “It’s going to be great. He brings energy to practice every day. He’s a talented football player. He’s going to bring energy to the locker room. It is going to work.”)
Burleson brought up this week that he called Brown a genius and mentioned the importance of counseling and how there was no stigma for asking for some help..
Advertisem*nt
“I’m looking at Antonio Brown’s situation, and there’s nothing wrong with asking for help,” Burleson said. “As a player, I’ve been to therapy. Removed from the game, I’ve been to therapy. If you need it, I feel like he should seek after it. Last week I called Antonio Brown a genius in regards to how he was able to leave Pittsburgh, go to Oakland, leave Oakland, and land with the Patriots. Now, as far as the allegations, I don’t know what’s true, so I will not call these women liars, and I will not say that Antonio Brown is guilty. But as far as his actions, when it comes to how he is just burning bridges everywhere he goes, it’s the last thing from genius. It is very self-destructive behavior, which is unfortunate. The world is going to provide obstacles in front of us. You don’t need to provide them yourself.”
Owning that is something viewers will respect. Analyst Bill Cowher said Brown “doesn’t need a football field; he needs counseling.” CBS did not show Brown’s tweets, nor did they offer much discussion about how we should view the teams who picked Brown up.
6. Good on CBS Sports Network’s “The Other Pregame Show” to stay with the shot so viewers could see Patriots coach Bill Belichick steaming from a perfectly legit question from Dana Jacobson.
For those who watched, The NFL Today gave this clip a quicker cut at the end.
TOPS stayed with it so you could see the full Belichick. https://t.co/9A7IaW6yIX
— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) September 22, 2019
The NFL Today cut the Belichick ending a little shorter so viewers did not get the full stare down. For those asking what the difference is between Spurs coach Gregg Popovich and Belichick, it’s a fair question. Popovich also acts unprofessionally with broadcast reporters, and network right holders should call out Popovich when he pulls such nonsense with their employees. To me, Popovich’s saving grace is he will let you in on his humanity at times.
7. ESPN’s “Sunday Morning Countdown” led with Brown on Sunday and after a couple of quick comments from host Sam Ponder and analysts Randy Moss, Matt Hasselback and Tedy Bruschi, the show quickly pivoted to insiders Adam Schefter and Chris Mortensen, who focused on what the NFLPA might do with Brown via grievances and guaranteed contracts before going around the league. On that show, analyst Rex Ryan called the Chiefs-Ravens game “maybe the biggest game of the entire year.” It’s Week 3, my man!
8. “There’s no choice for me,” Cowboys broadcaster Brad Sham told David Moore of the Dallas Morning News. “God comes first.” In a terrific story, Moore detailed how Sham won’t call the Dallas game on Sept. 29 game for the club’s flagship station, 105.3 The Fan. That’s the second broadcast he will miss in 41 years, both due to observing Rosh Hashanah. Sham told Moore he will be an usher for the early service at Temple Emanu-El a week when the Cowboys are in New Orleans. The game will be underway by the time he helps gather up the prayer books for the second service before going home.
9. Like the Steelers, the NFL’s national viewership would get a boost by a successful Browns team. The Browns 23-3 win over the Jets last Monday was down just 1 percent against the equivalent Seahawks-Bears in Week 2 last year. Last night’s game against the Rams drew a 12.8 overnight rating, which was down from last year’s13.6 for the Patriots-Lions. Some caveats: The 13.6 was the best Week 3 SNF overnight rating since 2015 and last night’s game was up against the Emmy Awards. So I read this as a good rating.It was the first Sunday Night Football game in Cleveland since Sept. 14, 2008.
Advertisem*nt
10. Fascinating television stat from Fox Sports’s director of strategy, Mike Mulvhill: On the two NFL Sunday afternoons of the 2019 regular season, viewing of cable news was down 31 percent compared to last year and down 66 percent compared to 2017. The question, of course, is what does that mean? Is it cable news fatigue? A desire to get away from news on Sunday? Both? The biggest thing to watch will be these numbers for the first weeks of the 2020 NFL season through 2020 Election Day (and then the immediate weeks afterward) when the election news is at its most fever-pitch. I predict we will see a reverse.
11. Nice pre-snap call by CBS NFL analyst James Lofton on a first down for the Falcons with 11:36 left in the third quarter of yesterday’s game against the Colts. “When I see Keith Smith, the fullback, still in the game, what that tells me is play-action, get another blocker in, let’s take a shot, let’s see if we can the ball down the field and maybe get (Mohamed) Sanu going deep or Julio Jones crossing the field.” The play turned out to be a 34-yard out-and-up to Falcons wide receiver Julio Jones.
12. Love seeing an NFL announcing team that can needle each other. Here were Eagle and Fouts in the fourth quarter of the Chiefs-Ravens.
Eagle: “(Mecole) Hardman is a return man so he is accustomed to fielding balls like that.”
Fouts: “No, that was a drop kick. Nobody is accustomed to fielding a drop kick.”
13. On “The NFL Today,” Simms had some very nice pregame moments on Daniel Jones. “Pat Shurmur said now I can run my whole offense,” Simms said. “Not really a slight against Eli Manning but what he means is they can now do more play actions because Daniel Jones is very athletic, mobile, RPOs and things like that. Run the option a little bit, keep the ball. But I think the biggest thing of all, as we see in the NFL, on third down and five and six, guys are not always going to be open. Can you scramble and pick up that first down? I think that is the big thing that can really help the Giants this week.”
As an intro to the segment: “The NFL Today” showed clips of Simms’s first start in Oct. 1979 (against Tampa Bay) as a lead-in to Daniel Jones’s first start (against Tampa Bay).
14. Here are some of the tweets that Sports Illustrated NFL reporter Robert Klemko received after his reporting on Brown.
Luckily these Patriots fans are being really chill and cool about all this. pic.twitter.com/Dpg6TwAK7E
— Robert Klemko (@RobertKlemko) September 21, 2019
15. I really liked that CBS announcers Dan Fouts and Ian Eagle were matter-of-fact with Ravens coach John Harbaugh’s repeated decision to go for it on fourth-and-short in the second quarter. Nothing crazy about the decision and good on Eagle to remind viewers of the short field when Kansas City’s Demarcus Robinson made a great catch for a touchdown following one of those fourth-down stops.
Advertisem*nt
16. Great job by Fox director Jeremy Green to get a memorable end-of-the-game image of a limping Saquon Barkley coming across the field on crutches to celebrate with his Giants teammates following the missed field goal by Bucs kicker Matt Gay.
17. Nice piece by The Athletic’s Greg Auman on Sara Walsh who was laid off by ESPN in 2018 while on maternity leave after having twins and has since found a new home as an NFL and college football sideline reporter for Fox Sports as well as a host for NASCAR. Last September, I did a with Walsh on what it was like to lose her dream job at ESPN. I found her to be an honest broker.
18. With the Joe Buck/Troy Aikman/Erin Andrews crew off this Sunday, the broadcast team of Chris Myers/Daryl Johnston/Laura Okmin called the Fox game that went to the most households on Sunday. The Broncos-Packers 1 p.m. ET kickoff was assigned by Fox to 28 percent of the nation, the most for that network. Thanks to J.P. Kirby who runs the great 506 Sports site (which details all the NFL broadcast windows) for passing along that Myers once called a game (Carolina at Miami) that went to 72 percent of the country in 2013.
19. NBC “Football Night In America” host Mike Tirico went 22 minutes with Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield during an interview this week. It was obviously too long to run in full on “Football Night in America” but NBC Sports put it up on its digital site in full. The interview has a lot of good moments.
20. It takes a village to put on an NFL highlight show. For example, there are more than 20 people cutting highlights for “NFL Primetime,” which returned to ESPN+ on Sept. 15 featuring hosts Chris Berman and Tom Jackson. “NFL PrimeTime” will stream on ESPN+ live Sunday nights throughout the 2019 NFL season at 7:30 p.m. ET. The show is updated following its initial live airing, with highlights from Sunday and Monday night games narrated by SportsCenter anchor Scott Van Pelt and MMF’s Joe Tessitore. There are an additional 30 people or so are involved in the daily production. Last week, I traded emails with Chad Minutillo, the producer of the show and an 11-year veteran of ESPN, for some background on the production
How were you assigned to be the producer for this show?
I was lucky enough to produce “Sunday NFL Countdown” with Boomer and I still do that show on Sunday mornings. We’ve been close for a number of years and I was honored when I was considered to join Tommy and Boomer in the return of PrimeTime on ESPN+. Let me also be clear, this show is all about Tommy and Boomer. They make it easy on a producer. Everyone involved loves football, so all the work each week to put this show together for the fans is one of the most rewarding projects you can imagine. Also, I’m honored to be a small part of the return of the most legendary duo in sports history. I grew up watching the show every single Sunday idolizing this iconic duo and now to be alongside them in their return is truly incredible.
What can viewers expect to see between 7:30-8:15 p.m.?
It will be a one-stop shop for all your highlights every Sunday night that takes you much deeper than a typical recap. Boomer and TJ have a knack for entertaining and also for taking you inside the true storylines of the game, not just the obvious.
Advertisem*nt
How many breaks during the show?
The live show on ESPN+ is 45 minutes with no commercials. We will also update the show with Sunday night and Monday night football highlights so that we recap every game for the on-demand replay on ESPN+.
Will the show have any restrictions on showing highlights from the 1 p.m. and 4:25 pm. games?
We will be showing you all the 1 p.m. games and the 4 p.m. games once they are over.
How will Van Pelt and Tessitore specifically be placed into the show?
Scott Van Pelt will do the Sunday Night Football highlight and Joe Tess will be doing the Monday Night Football highlight. They will then be inserted into the show available for replay on ESPN+ to keep it up to date.
How will you judge success for it?
I will judge success on how well we are serving the fans every Sunday night. Our goal is to bring the most entertaining highlights that can take you beyond the obvious box score and into the true storylines of the game.
The Ink Report
1. The salad days for pro wrestling on television are upon us. On Oct. 4 “Friday Night Smackdown” debuts on the Fox network as the WWE’s Smackdown brand moves networks (from USA Network) to a new day (now airing Fridays at 8 p.m. ET). But Smackdown isn’t the only show of note coming to a major network. AEW will make its television debut on TNT two days earlier with its flagship show, “AEW Dynamite.” That show will air every Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET where it will compete against NXT, a new show featuring performers in the WWE’s developmental circuit, on the USA Network.
How will this play out for the networks —and the wrestling promotions? I paneled three long-time wrestling journalists for some insight:
- David Bixenspan reports on wrestling for Deadspin, Mel Magazine and others and is the author of the wrestling newsletter, Babyface v Heel.
- Justin Barrasso is a longtime pro wrestling writer who covers pro wrestling for Sports Illustrated.
- Dave Meltzer is the editor and founder of the Wrestling Observer Newsletterand you can find his work there via podcasts and Wrestling Observer Live.
What are the specific challenges for WWE and Fox Sports regarding the move from USA Network to Fox?
Barrasso: The biggest challenge for WWE will be sustaining their relationship with Fox. Looking back, UFC viewership numbers were pivotal for Fox when launching FS1 and FS2 in August of 2013. Those numbers helped Fox considerably and served as a tremendous building block in the relationship between Fox and UFC. It’s also similar to the new relationship between Fox and WWE. There were lots of crossover potential between UFC and Fox, but those were rarely acted on the longer the partnership ran. Maybe ratings started dipping, or perhaps Fox and UFC wanted different things on certain decisions, but it serves as a good reminder how these relationships always start out shiny and exciting. How will the relationship evolve? What will the relationship between WWE and Fox look like in a year, especially if Fox stops believing that they’re going to bring in three-plus million viewers every Friday night, or if WWE starts making decisions that Fox doesn’t support? Those challenges will arise. How will they be handled? WWE wants the Fox deal for all the extra exposure. Fox wants WWE to pop a big number on Friday nights. Watching those two desires play against (or with) each other is a major part of this relationship.
Advertisem*nt
Bixenspan: Networks that wanted wrestling have historically ended up having trouble retaining the wrestling fans for other programming. Here, there’s no network lead out, but it should be interesting to see if the affiliate newscasts see any changes in their numbers.
Also:
- The decision to have the show positioned as a Fox Sports property but tape delayed on the West Coast feels like a contradiction despite the obvious Nielsen benefits, though they are ordering it live in their app/website in the Pacific time zone. If that siphons viewers and they see the streaming numbers coming in surprisingly high/West Coast TV numbers surprisingly low, how do they react without alienating those fans?
- The shift in priority for WWE. In the brand split era, they’ve always had a hard time balancing the shows as equals, instead having clearly delineated A and B shows. How do you service what should be the flagship in SmackDown, with the bigger potential audience, while not weakening Raw, the historical flagship with the longer relationship and bigger overall contract? (Even if SmackDown it’s getting more per programming hour.)
- In the 20 years that the basic format for the modern WWE live event schedule existed, it’s always been Raw on Monday then SmackDown on Tuesday (originally recorded for Thursday or Friday before eventually going live) following house shows over the weekend. That was the easiest way to do it for everyone —wrestlers, office staff, or production crew. Now, the Raw and SmackDown crews are going to be the most separate they’ve been in the brand split era, as they’re going to be on completely different schedules with SmackDown being after a few days off for any shared staff, crew, and whatever staging elements they bring with them. Will there be anything to adjust to? Will it be harder to get freelance production staff who normally do weekend sports?
- Keeping the audience young when, so far, the promotional strategy has been to push older, retired legends in the main spots airing on Fox, not to mention the move to Fridays, where the show never really thrived, even if it’s going to be on its strongest network ever. We really don’t know what kind of out clause Fox has, if any, since they’re the kings of early cancellation, especially in the Friday night death slot. (Perhaps most infamously, there was the pledge to give the creators of “Reunion” time to wrap up the show’s mystery if canceled, only for Fox to cancel it and then not do that.) Granted, under $4 million/week for dependable prime time network programming that fills an entire night for them is kind of a bargain, even year-round.
- Making sure WWE actually does things in service of its large black and Latino audiences. They’ll be launching the new SmackDown with a black champion in Kofi Kingston, and everyone kind of expects Rey Mysterio to be drafted over during the second week since he’s the most popular star with the Latino audience by far, etc. But with Kingston starting a feud with Brock Lesnar and the overall spotty record WWE has, will they actually make a consistent effort?
Meltzer: I don’t know of any real challenges. WWE has been doing live television for decades. They do it multiple days weekly so that’s not a challenge. The pressure is different. Even with the big declines in viewership, particularly under 35, WWE remains a powerhouse on cable standards and that isn’t changing. Network standards are very different. This same show years back was canceled by CW when viewership was a lot higher than it is now. But network standards are different now than they were then. And wrestling is viewed differently as well, as shown by the money television is willing to spend on it. Ratings are always important, but the Fox Friday ratings take on a lot more importance because a great cable number isn’t a great network number.
What are your top-line thoughts on Fox Sports becoming the home to Smackdown?
Barrasso: Great exposure for WWE. Big ratings for Fox. What could possibly go wrong?
Bixenspan: This is that first time that WWE has ever had one of its weekly shows on one of the big four broadcast networks. They’ve had syndication, of course, and they’ve had shows on the CW, UPN, MNTV, Ion, Univision, and Telemundo, plus periodic specials on NBC and Fox, but never a weekly show on a big three or but four (depending on when) network. It’s completely uncharted territory for them. With a lot of star power and general priority shifting over to SmackDown with the move, they should see at least a pretty decent increase in viewership, but nobody really knows how much. I don’t know if there’s much middle ground between success and disappointment.
Meltzer: Having a weekly show on a network the caliber of Fox is huge for WWE and the industry. Smackdown started on UPN and then moved to CW, which are networks, but Fox is a big step up. Plus the money involved in the bidding across the board for Raw and Smackdown have changed the business completely. It used to be a business built around getting consumers to buy tickets, pay-per-views and merchandise. Now that is all a distant second to providing hours of first-run television content. Sometimes those two things help each other, and sometimes they work against each other because too much content does lead to fan burnout and we’ve seen that as well in recent years, not just in wrestling.
Would you expect more or less viewers for Smackdown two years from now and why?
Barrasso: Everyone is talking about ratings, and of course they matter, but WWE on Fox is also significant for the chance to seed talent elsewhere, like Finn Balor at MLS All-Star Game, having a footprint at the Super Bowl, guest appearances on shows, etc. The key here is the back half of the deal, which is where we’ll get our answers on this being a success or failure. Think about the last two years of the UFC-Fox partnership where there were still some cool collaborations but it was beyond clear that everyone was “over” each other, so to speak. So what comes next? That’s the big question. To me, it’s two options. Either this thing goes as Fox expects and is a huge success as they integrate WWE into everything, and eventually SmackDown becomes the major focus for WWE. Or, the numbers don’t perform/there are challenges in working together and SmackDown becomes just another part of the Fox portfolio. I would say there’s an 18-month grace period until we know which of those is correct.
Bixenspan: Hard to say. The promotional war is such a massive wildcard that could lead to anything from WWE being degraded to the uncool number two to something that elevates both companies and kicks off a boom period. There’s also the fact that it’s now going to be at the end of the week after another four hours of live, major league TV wrestling has been plopped in the middle of the week on cable. If you want to watch all of the live TV wrestling available on TV starting in October, that’s seven hours for WWE alone and a total of nine including “AEW Dynamite.” SmackDown needs to be must-see to avoid viewer fatigue, as does Raw to an extent with its daunting run time. (NXT has, at least as an hour show, generally been pretty easy to watch, and I’d expect similar from AEW, so between the middle of the week and the war intrigue, they’ll probably be the least fatiguing.)
Advertisem*nt
Meltzer: That’s a tough question. Ultimately the key here is what is the difference between Fox and USA. The stronger the station, the more people will view the show. “Smackdown,” like “Raw,” has been falling year-to-year but because of changes not nearly as fast. Moving from Syfy to USA gave them an artificial boost. Moving live to Tuesday gave them another one. Then after a few years of live on Tuesday, there was a decline each year. Moving to Fox is a double boost, more homes get F0x and it’s a much higher rated station. Moving from Tuesday to Friday is a negative. When “Smackdown” years back moved from Thursday to Friday, it dropped about 20 percent. Does the gain in homes and station power offset what one would expect to be a 20 percent drop due to a worse day? Yes. But in two years, that’s harder to predict. Will so much televised wrestling burn the audience out, or will a wrestling promotional war make it more exciting? That’s a huge question. Some think just having the network prestige will make the product seem more important, and thus create a new boom period. It’s a very unpredictable time for the industry. It’s a good time for fans because the pressure is strong to provide a good product, and the best time for talent ever, more money, more jobs, less of a restriction on who can make it and far less narrow-minded views on who can be a star. But wrestling has historically been cyclical and overexposure is historically very real.
How do you anticipate AEW will fare as a television product on TNT?
Barrasso: A popular term in wrestling is “alternative,” but that doesn’t always mean a significant change in content. Wrestling fans want options, whether the promotions are similar, or, as we saw with Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport event, presented in a drastically different manner. AEW is another option for fans and it will draw numbers. Numbers in the region of 800,000 per week would be a major success for the remainder of 2019. Wrestling fans also now have the chance to see moments that were remembered so fondly during the WWE-WCW battles on Monday nights, when talent would cause a stir by appearing on television for a new promotion. If Marty Scurll, for example, signs with AEW once his Ring of Honor contract expires, he will get the internet (and, for AEW, hopefully the television ratings) buzzing once he makes his debut. In addition to creating their own image of pro wrestling, AEW also is home to WWE stars who defect and cut promos on their former employers. There will certainly be an audience for that.
Bixenspan: The “All Out” countdown show doing 390,000 viewers in a bad Friday night time slot with no real promotion and it mainly being reruns from YouTube shows that the existing fans already saw was a great sign. It’s pretty hard to take a guess, though, because there’s nothing you can really compare it to as far as a new national promotion on a massive cable network without any kind of existing TV audience. I think averaging above Impact’s “Destination America” peak of that 600,000 range would be a solid start, and getting into the Impact on Spike range of over a million would be an unqualified success. They do have the WWE NXT competition, but the good news is that they do appear to have cultivated a much more distinct fan base from WWE than impact did and are bringing back lapsed fans to some degree. I’m not really sure if anything would really surprise me in terms of specific numbers, but I do expect it to be an overall success on TNT.
Meltzer: That’s a really tough question because we have nothing to go by. They’ve done three pay-per-view shows, including the original “All In,” which all performed at a level that made no sense by all the rules of wrestling. The ticket demand for several of their early shows was off the charts, particularly the second Chicago show this past Labor Day. It’s an amazing story, but things are coming back to normal. The people in charge are smart people, they listen to their audience, but they are also learning on the job. If WWE had two hours of weekly television, I’d say they would, in time, do great. With WWE committed to seven, and possibly adding more, it is tougher. What’s been amazing is the size of their audience with so little crossover from the WWE fan base. They are drawing either their own fans they’ve created, or brought back fans WWE ran off. A little of both and nobody knows how much of each.
The key to their success is if being on television creates and adds to their fan base. When UFC got television in 2005, it exploded. But the world of engaging new fans has changed greatly since then, particularly to those under 35, which from live shows, seem to be the age they cater to. We know that their ability to promote through social media has created an audience that will travel around the country a few times a year to see them, but you can’t count on that when running weekly on Wednesday nights, and the number to create a high ticket demand for live shows is very different from a million weekly viewers on television. The shows they have done have been largely very well received, they have great talent, easily the best tag team division in wrestling, and have enough talent to put on great weekly television shows. But the people in charge are learning on the job and are trying to prove you don’t need scriptwriters for wrestling television. All indications are they should do well but it’s going to be a fight.
Taking on WWE is infinitely harder in 2020 than it would have been in 2018 before these TV deals and before their early success led to WWE greatly increasing pay to talent to ward off the mentality of not that many months ago when many publicly, and even more privately were looking at the new place as a way to get more career satisfaction. But many goes who were all but out the door reconsidered when WWE offered them more than they ever thought they’d make. A guy like Jon Moxley, who didn’t care about money and wanted self-satisfaction and felt he needed to work in Japan and AEW to get it, are the exceptions. Honestly in 2018, they probably would have become the cool alternative and much of the talent would be looking to go there. In 2020, the situation is different and they have a much harder fight. If you’re looking at things logically, starting from scratch against an established industry leader with a giant worldwide market share at its financially strongest position looks like a longshot. It depends on the quality of their television and the value of prime time television on a top ten station to create a new audience. And in a changing landscape, we don’t know what that is.
What kind of an impact (if any) will promotion on Fox Sports’s other properties (NFL, college football, NASCAR) have on the WWE?
Barrasso: The best-case scenario is an expanded reach for WWE with the hope of attracting more families. As this WWE-AEW “war” heats up, it’s clear that wrestling diehards will always follow WWE, though not necessarily support it. With Fox, you can now have talent appearing on other Fox shows, at NFL games, the World Series, and beyond. If you can start getting WWE stars on various Fox shows, winning over those fans, maybe they’ll watch SmackDown, or maybe not. But the visibility of WWE expands significantly each time that happens. It’s less about ratings and more about always being top of mind and on people’s radar. Even with sports luminary Keith Olbermann criticizing Fox’s decision to highlight Braun Strowman in the broadcasting booth during last Thursday’s Cardinals-Cubs game, WWE constantly remains relevant, and even more so on Fox.
Bixenspan: At least during the lead-up, it’s been there best and most synergistic promotion WWE has ever gotten from a weekly TV partner. If that continues, I can only see it helping, though they need to continue to keep a tight leash on the announcers to make sure that they don’t get sarcastic, disingenuous, or outright hostile reads like WCW programming used to get during Braves games. Wrestling is a lot more socially acceptable now in the mainstream sports world, but it’s a legitimate concern. Also: It’s possible that this promotion won’t help as much as expected due to the demographics overlapping less than some might think, especially with NASCAR. Wrestling programming tends to over-index with black and Latino viewers, especially on broadcast.
Advertisem*nt
Meltzer: It will help, especially at first. There was a reason for years that UFC did its best ratings on Fox during football season. But with UFC, that gap did lessen after a few years. It’s new promotion and guys will be pushed as names and stars. Ultimately, the ability of the product to keep viewers will determine success or failure, but I consider all this as a strong jump start.
2. Episode 69 of the Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch features two guests. First up is Garret Graff, the author of the best-selling book, “The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11.” He is followed by Kavitha Davidson and Anders Kelto, the co-hosts of “The Lead” which is a new daily podcast from The Athletic and Wondery LLC. It is the first daily podcast for The Athletic.
In this podcast, Graf discusses how his Politico Magazine piece for the 15th anniversary of 9/11 about being aboard Air Force One with the president on 9/11 led to his current book; the challenge of writing something that captured what the national experience was like on 9/11; how he and his colleague Jenny Pachucki culled through the many sources of audio data at the 9/11 Memorial StoryCorps, the Flight 93 National Memorial, the Pentagon Historian’s Office and other sources; what process he used to compartmentalize his work for the book; how his sources reacted upon reflection of 9/11; the incredible story of the first fighters scrambled into the air to intercept what we now know was United 93; the decision to run the transcript of the hijackers from inside the co*ckpit; how much happenstance, fate, luck, and random life decisions impacted 9/11; the role of Roger Clemens, the Yankees, Monday Night Football on that day, and much more.
In the second conversation, Davidson and Anders Kelto discuss what the concept of The Lead is and why it exists; how they put the podcast together; how they will judge success; how to differentiate the podcast within a crowded market; the ability of the staff to morph to audio; whether the market exists for such a show; why The Athletic is doing it, and much more.
You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and more.
3. Georgia’s win over Notre Dame drew a 6.2 overnight rating for CBS, making it the highest-rated college football game so far this season. It topped LSU-Texas, which drew a 5.8 overnight on ABC.
3a. Here are the overnight ratings for Saturday’s CFB pregame shows (11:00 a.m.-noon ET). I think both networks are happy with these numbers.
- College GameDay (ESPN): 1.8
- Big Noon Kickoff (Fox): 0.7
- Week Three: 1.6 to 0.7
- Week Two: 1.7 to 0.7
- Week One: 1.6 to 0.8
3b. Wisconsin’s win over Michigan drew a 3.5 overnight for Fox, which is Fox’s highest-rated college football game this season. Games at noon for Fox are up 71 percent.
3c. ESPN and Special Olympics have signed an eight-year extension of their global programming deal.
3d. Cool to see The Athletic’s WNBA editor Hannah Withiam get some pub on the “Buckets, Boards and Blocks” podcast with Monica Mcnu*tt.
Advertisem*nt
3e. The NHL Network will debut “Behind The Glass: Philadelphia Flyers Training Camp” on Sept. 25. The production shadows Flyers players as they report to camp, undergo endurance and skill tests, play in preseason and exhibition games in the U.S. and Europe, and compete for roster spots.
3f. Longtime Octagon Sports executive David Schwab has a new podcast examining the nexus of fandom and sports and entertainment. Octagon represents a ton of people in athletics and media. ESPN’s Trey Wingo and Laura Froelich, Head of U.S. Content Partnerships at Twitter, were two of the initial guests.
3g. ESPN’s Sam Borden is fronting a YouTube series of explainer videos for fans. Here’s how college football play-calling was revolutionized by a graduate assistant:
4. Sports pieces of note:
- “Why I’m here.” By Lindsay Gottlieb, for The Players Tribune. Gottlieb is now an assistant coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
- SI’s Michael Rosenberg sat down with former All-Pro wide receiver Calvin Johnson — and it was quite revealing.
- Via Rachel Axon of USA Today: Domestic violence red flags are easy to find in coaches’ pasts, but did NFL teams spot them?
- From Sam McDowell of the Kansas City Star: Anxiety, depression, panic disorder: Royals pitcher Danny Duffy reveals silent pain.
- The untold story of wrestler Andrew Johnson’s dreadlocks. By Jesse Washington of The Undefeated.
- If it happened as soccer grew in the U.S., Tony Quinn likely photographed it. By Pablo Maurer of The Athletic.
- He paints, plays guitar — and sacks quarterbacks. By Shannon Ryan of The Chicago Tribune.
- From Bo Wulf of The Athletic: Josh McCown has thrown touchdown passes to 37 different players during his career. How many of them does he remember?
Non-sports pieces of note:
- What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max? By William Langewiesche.
- From Emily Giambalvo of The Washington Post: Twelve years ago, 47 dogs were rescued from Michael Vick’s dogfighting operation and allowed to live. They’ve enriched the lives of countless humans and altered the course of animal welfare.
- The Psychiatrist Who Believed People Could Tell the Future. By Sam Knight of The New Yorker.
- Via NPR: 1 In 16 Women Reports First Sexual Encounter As Rape.
- FromLauren Smiley of Wired: A Brutal Murder, a Wearable Witness, and an Unlikely Suspect.
- Via The Atlantic: While researching a book on Earl Campbell at the University of Texas, a writer discovered a secret 1950s strategy to keep black students out.
- Why does any Canadian need a handgun? What the gun control debate is missing.
- Via Jamie Ducharme of Time: How Juul Hooked Kids and Ignited a Public Health Crisis.
- The Drama of Conflict. By Dan O’Brien of The Paris Review.
- Young People Are Going to Save Us All From Office Life. By Claire Cain Miller and Sanam Yar of the New York Times.
- By Martha Mendoza for The Walrus: In 2012, a member of one of Asia’s richest families killed a Bangkok police officer in a hit and run. Seven years later, he’s still free.
- How one Florida psychiatric hospital makes millions off patients who have no choice. By Neil Bedi of the Tampa Bay Times.
- You won’t regret reading this piece, especially if you love dogs. “She Quit Her Job. He Got Night Goggles. They Searched 57 Days for Their Dog.” By Mike Baker of the New York Times.
(Top photo: Daniel Shirey / Getty Images)
