From some of the folk I’ve chatted with, many weren’t fanatically happy with the Saturday night Richmond event. Even with a whole bunch of teams vying for 8 spots, it just didn’t generate a ton of excitement.The TV ratings seemed to reflect that to some degree.
Unlike the U.S. Open: Women’s Semi-Final 2009 on CBS, where their ratings went up through out the event (1.9 million started watching, but by the end, 3.8 million were watching), NASCAR showed viewership attrition through the event.
Despite the battle for the lead between Denny Hamlin and Jeff Gordon, which somehow I missed some of, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event at Richmond started out with 5.6 million viewers but by the end of the event, it had dropped to 5.0 million viewers.
The drop in viewers is not as bad as it could be, but still, the snooze affect is there and viewers were bailing for greener pastures.
Then again, the race telecast itself on ABC was in a battle with Cops and America’s Most Wanted… and ended up tying for the adult 18-49 demographic. Ouch.
Yea… something’s up.
Maybe related, maybe not, but the other night I tuned into Monday Night Football and it bored the living crap out of me. What is ABC / ESPN / Disney doing wrong? I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s very drab to me. Is it ESPN on ABC that’s losing the viewers or are people bored with 3 to 4 hours of the same thing, lap after lap?
Any thoughts on this one gang?
source: TV By The Numbers
