The National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball are back, but if the opening night ratings are any indication, neither may have any ‘major’ impact in the ratings.
The NBA and MLB trailed the FOX News shows considerably, as well as other news outlets, like MSNBC’s Rachel Madow.
this isn’t surprising at all, considering sports have now become second fiddle to overpaid athletes pushing their own political agenda.
Though there will surly be some spike in ratings simply due to the fact that Americans have been without spectator sports for a while now, the long-term prognosis of politicized American sports may suffer under these circumstances.
Forbes has the story:
Summer usually brings some of the year’s most iconic television, from the crack of bats on baseball’s opening day to the hushed voices of the final rounds of golf’s PGA Tour. Typically, these are also among the highest-rated shows on television during the summer months—but 2020 has shattered all the rules.
Since June 1, Fox News Channel has been not just the most-watched cable news network, but the highest-rated network in all of television. With an average prime-time audience of 3.451 million viewers, FNC beat CBS VIAC -0.8% (3.430 million), NBC (3.155 million), ABC (2.690 million) and Fox Broadcasting (1.414 million).
With the coronavirus dominating news coverage since early in the year, cable news has seen big jumps in viewership, but neither CNN nor MSNBC has managed to deliver audiences as consistently big as Fox News. The network’s ratings delivery has held strong, even as some major sports—initially canceled or delayed due to the pandemic—returned to television.
On July 24th, ESPN’s coverage of Major League Baseball’s opening day featured a marquee prime-time matchup between the New York Yankees and the Washington Nationals. The game drew an average total audience of 4.005 million viewers and finished as the fourth-highest-rated show on television that night. But Fox’s Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight both beat the big game, with Hannity taking first place in all of television with 4.340 million viewers, followed by CBS’ prime-time show Young Sheldon (4.111 million viewers) and Tucker Carlson Tonight (4.016 million).
When basketball returned to prime-time last Thursday night, TNT expected a big audience for the thrilling showdown between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers—and they got it. Drawing 3.4 million total viewers, the game more than doubled TNT’s average viewership for a regular season NBA broadcast. And yet even LeBron James leading the Lakers to a narrow victory wasn’t enough to beat Fox News Channel’s Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight, which delivered 4 million and 3.8 million viewers respectively, according to ratings data compiled by Nielsen.
Maybe the "silent majority" has finally found a way to flex their muscles.
As long as professional sports continue to alienate half the country, expect the silent, non-violent protests to continue.
Breitbart has more on the opening day ratings:
As the NBA and MLB return from their coronavirus-imposed hiatus, it appears TV viewers are not interested in what the increasingly woke leagues have to offer.
With both baseball and basketball draped in all sorts of Black Lives Matter and social justice symbolism for their opening games, a substantially smaller number of fans tuned-in to the rest of the week’s games.
According to Outkick.com, neither league did well.
As for the opening games, Outkick reported that the return of the NBA on TNT saw the following numbers:
Lakers-Clippers: 3.4 million
Pelicans-Jazz: 2.1 millionESPN’s MLB return numbers were also underwhelming:
Yankees-Nationals: 4.0 million
Dodgers-Giants: 2.8 millionOutkick’s Ryan Glasspiegel added more ratings numbers on Twitter.
“To be fair since I compared MLB vs NBA return night 1, here is night 2,” (July 24) he wrote, adding:
MLB (last Friday, ESPN)
Mets-Braves (4p) – 922K
Brewers-Cubs(7p) – 1.0M
Angels-As (10p) – 797KNBA (last night ESPN) (July 31)
Celtics-Bucks (6:30p) – 1.3M
Mavs-Rockets (9p)- 1.7MThe Athletic’s Ethan Strauss also noted that the numbers continued to fall off for MLB:
Will this silent protest make any difference?
That's hard to say, as the radical left has a way of twisting the most obvious of movements into whatever serves their purpose...
It's only a matter of time before sports fans are called racist.
It's already happened in NASCAR.
Stay tuned for more...
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