TV Ratings for Semi's down 36%
So its halftime and it was discussed at the NYE party I was at. Why did the NCAA have the Semi's on NYE? Will the ratings drop because everyone will be busy at parties?
My answer was that I thought they would drop a little (~10%) from last year due to NYE.
Well here is the answer: http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/eye-on-college-football/25434171/college-football-playoff-semifinal-ratings-drop-36-on-new-years-eve
January 1st, 2016 at 3:50 PM ^
January 1st, 2016 at 3:54 PM ^
January 2nd is almost always a working day (and half the time it isn't, the NYD bowls are shifted there anyway due to NFL). At least a lot of people have NYE off, January 2nd is maybe only an option for one game.
TV is not going to let these games all run against each other. There is only so much you can do with the Rose not moving off it's timeslot.
January 1st, 2016 at 4:09 PM ^
For a lot of people including myself.. This year Jan 2 would have been a no-brainer.
January 1st, 2016 at 4:44 PM ^
It absolutely is, and as someone who has to work the whole week in between Christmas and New Year's I sympathize. But SOME, roughly a third of the work force, do not have to work this week at all. Whereas in 99% of years, January 2 is a working day for everyone.
If the Rose and Sugar Bowls were being played on January 2nd in two years, when it's a random working Tuesday, there would be just as must consternation. Better New Year's Eve.
January 1st, 2016 at 4:02 PM ^
January 1st, 2016 at 4:08 PM ^
I'm about as hard core fan as they come and I didnt watch a down. Fuck them for putting the games on a day where real life actually takes the stage.
January 1st, 2016 at 5:32 PM ^
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January 1st, 2016 at 6:11 PM ^
You missed one of the great moments in Sparty history.
January 1st, 2016 at 4:12 PM ^
Think about it: With the Rose, Sugar and Fiesta Bowls all scheduled for the day after, it's kind of like going to a big summer concert festival where the headliner acts play first, and then the other bands play after them.
It does sort of feel that way - I'll agree with him on that point. If you're going to bury the two semifinals in the 12/31 - 1/1 block, if you will, then it seems like it would make sense to build up to them somehow, or maybe split them and make one of them the marquee game on each day. Using the semifinals as the lead-in to New Year's Rockin' Eve just didn't seem like a good idea to me, at least from a ratings standpoint.
January 1st, 2016 at 6:09 PM ^
What was also surreal was ESPN having its CFB Playoff announcers promoting "New Year's Rocking Eve" on ABC at 8:00 PM, and ABC having its "New Years Rocking Eve" announcers promoting the CFB Playoff games on ESPN at 8:00 PM . . . . all with a straight face as if these two events were not directly competing with each other and canabalizing each other's audience.
January 1st, 2016 at 4:14 PM ^
January 1st, 2016 at 4:21 PM ^
the national championship game since they put it late on a Monday night. Wish more would join that cause and get that game to a Saturday where it belongs.
January 1st, 2016 at 4:32 PM ^
It would coincide with the nfl games that are on saturdays for the playoffs.
January 1st, 2016 at 4:54 PM ^
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January 1st, 2016 at 4:33 PM ^
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January 1st, 2016 at 4:34 PM ^
January 1st, 2016 at 4:49 PM ^
Put simply, nobody cares about Michigan State except Michigan State. Having 3 teams with massive fanbases, then a small one... then two blowouts. As compared to last year with 4 massive fanbases, two out of three good games... Not to mention last year was the first year of the playoffs, its bound to be smaller.
"Now that we're on the biggest stage, we'll prove we're awesome, and they'll have to respekt us!"
Hehehe. Now they'll be remembered as the team that got absolutely obliterated in the playoffs.
January 1st, 2016 at 4:50 PM ^
January 1st, 2016 at 4:52 PM ^
I would guess one reason is those casual fans who don't follow CFB closely. They are used to watching on New Year's Day, and may not have even been aware the playoff games were the night before.
I actually prefer it this way, as it gave me a chance to watch other games on New Year's Day.
January 1st, 2016 at 5:28 PM ^
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January 1st, 2016 at 4:55 PM ^
...so college games are moved to Monday.
Next year would make more sense to have those playoff games on NYE. Not sure why they decided to do it this year.
January 1st, 2016 at 4:57 PM ^
Mon night Nc games for football & basketball blow.
I didn't mind Nye playoff games. Made the new year good also, seeing sparty ass raped on national tv.
January 1st, 2016 at 6:27 PM ^
my new years resolution is to post an explanation for any and all downvotes I give.
yours I downvoted because you said 'ass-raped' which just sounds stupid.
love you,
jdon
January 1st, 2016 at 5:08 PM ^
How about the ratings for this year's NY Day games (i.e. non-playoff games)?
(including Michigan-Florida and Notre Dame-tOSU)
I would assume they might be improved, though I guess you would have to compare that to the years before the playoff.
January 1st, 2016 at 5:01 PM ^
should go back to the way it used to be with the polls running through the bowl games. It will never happen because a playoff system will generate more money.
As for the lower ratings, they should have put the games on Saturday. There is nothing else on and not a whole lot to do.
January 1st, 2016 at 5:25 PM ^
I believe they were determined to have them rotate through the bowls which would have them on Jan 1 and Dec 31. Everyone in the world told them putting them on NYE was a horrible idea but I think ESPN publically said they were confident in their move.
I doubt they'll ever be on NYE again unless ESPN is just truly that stupid. Ratings for today's non-semi finals will be better than the CFP semis I'm almost sure of it
January 1st, 2016 at 5:57 PM ^
ESPN fought against this.
January 1st, 2016 at 6:26 PM ^
ESPN is complicit. They had all the leverage in creating this system as the biggest stakeholder. One suspects that vertical integration and Disney's desire to use the games as a platform to advertise New Year's Rockin' Eve and vice versa prevented the fighting from getting too intense. I suspect they were not anticipating the perfect storm of New Years Eve games featuring two teams with little to national prestige in massive blowouts and in the future we will see them split the semi finals between New Years Day and New Years Eve.
January 1st, 2016 at 6:34 PM ^
ESPN has gotten a lot wrong lately but this wasn't on them.
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January 1st, 2016 at 6:51 PM ^
ESPN asked them to make a one time exception for this year only, in order to provide programming on Saturday, and has otherwise maintained that they believe in the NYE concept. Basically, they asked the CFP to change an agreement they made a year into it on a one time only basis and the CFP said no... if ESPN hadn't wanted the games played on NYE in the first place they should not have negotiated it into the contract by promising New Years Day to the Rose and Sugar Bowls.
Everyone is getting caught up in this "ESPN asked to move them to Saturday" thing and forgetting that ESPN was there, in the room, while the playoff was being hammered out and had significant say in the way it was set up. Maybe they realized it was doomed after last year's NYE slate failed to set the world on fire and looked to take advantage of a scheduling quirk to avoid it in year two, but they should own this awful idea as much as the CFP.
January 1st, 2016 at 7:08 PM ^
January 1st, 2016 at 8:32 PM ^
"Tired of butting heads with the Rose to launch a playoff, former SEC commissioner Mike Slive created his own bowl for leverage and money by launching the “Champions Bowl” between the SEC and Big 12. Before buying the playoff in 2012, ESPN paid an average of $80 million a year each to the Rose and Champions (a place-holder name for a bowl that later got sold to the Sugar).
ESPN bought the rights to the entire playoff in a 12-year, $5.6 billion deal. The scheduling framework was set at the time. Only once every three years would the semifinals be on New Year's Day -- a day that's historically one of college football's most valuable brands -- and that would be when the Rose and Sugar had the rights in the semifinal rotation.
Hancock said keeping the Rose and Sugar on Jan. 1 every year was not necessary to get the playoff created.
“The 100-year tradition of the Rose Bowl is something that's important to college football,” Hancock said. “People sitting in their homes in Kansas City in the snow watching sun-drenched California on New Year's Day is a great national tradition, and if we didn't have to mess with it, we didn't want to mess with it.”
The conference commissioners also liked the idea of tripleheaders for the six major bowl games in a tight Dec. 31 to Jan. 1 television window. During the BCS era, the most lucrative bowl games were spread over multiple days on Jan. 1 and in the days to follow. Ratings for the BCS declined, in part because of bad matchups and also due to weeknight time slots. Perhaps ESPN felt that agreeing to the Rose and Sugar on Jan. 1 would give the network a better chance to win the playoff rights in a competitive market.
“I wasn't involved in the actual deal so I don't know,” Dawson said. “I don't know that there was a lot of chance for us to push back if we felt we needed to push back. At the end of the day, the jury is out on how we play out on New Year's Eve. We believe through marketing and commercials, we'll be able to inform the casual fan of the date change.”
Last January, ESPN tried to change this year's semifinal date for a one-year switch because of a quirk in the calendar. ESPN proposed moving the semifinals to Jan. 2 since it fell on a Saturday. The commissioners rejected the idea.
...
Now the question becomes how the public reacts to must-see games on New Year's Eve. Dawson said Dec. 31 is not a typical work day for Americans since many people leave early or take off, meaning they could watch the first semifinal. ESPN scheduled the second semifinal at 8 p.m. ET -- as opposed to 8:30 p.m. ET last season -- to provide a chance for the game to end before the ball drops at midnight on the East Coast.
Alabama-Michigan State is set for an 8:10 p.m. kickoff and could slide back 10 minutes, if needed, due to the Clemson-Oklahoma game running long. The second semifinal will be competing against New Year's Eve programs on most of the major networks, including New Year's Rockin' Eve on sister network ABC. Details are still being worked out for some cross-promotion on ABC and ESPN during those broadcasts, Dawson said."
http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/writer/jon-solomon/25423605/wi…
I'm not entirely sure where you get the idea that anything was untrue... the schedule was set when the TV deal with ESPN was negotiated, the Rose and Sugar's placement was not crucial to getting the deal done but ESPN already had deals signed with the Sugar and Rose Bowls for massive amounts of money. ESPN was planning to arrange the schedule for cross promotion with ABC's New Year's Eve programming. The new VP at ESPN who was not there at the time this was hammered out "does not know if they had any ability to push back" which more or less means that they didn't push back at all and only tried to move the games to January 2 a year into the deal, probably after the blowouts last New Year's Eve proved to be gigantic duds.
January 1st, 2016 at 5:45 PM ^
New Year's Eve was going to be tough to begin with, plus the matches were not as enticing as last year
January 1st, 2016 at 6:00 PM ^
Of course. What a stupid idea to put the semi's on duing a day when many people still have to work and when many more have plans for the evening. Just like people have for the last 100 years.
If I was an advertiser, I would have a fit. Not only are the ratings down, but the people that are watching are only watching with one eye as they do something else at the same time. They are not focusing on your commercials.
The NCAA needs to put these games on New Years Day, or if they are not willing to do that, then on the Saturday closest to New Years Day.
This year, Saturday is completely free. There are no NFL games on. The biggest game on is a High School All Star game. What a stupid waste. If the Playoffs were tomorrow, they would be very highly rated.
January 1st, 2016 at 6:21 PM ^
I'd actually argue that if we're ditching the New Year's concept completely, they should play the semis on December 26th.
January 1st, 2016 at 5:58 PM ^
Concern for any of these bowl games is the real problem. Have the semis on campus and pick whereever for the National title game every year and play it whenever you want but not New Years.
January 1st, 2016 at 6:31 PM ^
January 1st, 2016 at 6:40 PM ^
January 1st, 2016 at 7:33 PM ^
This may sound crazy, but at our sportsmen's club we had 60 to 75 people watching both games....as some left and others arrived during the games. I'd be willing to bet that there were similar gatherings all around the country last night. Our club has two huge TV's, so any survey based on what channel was on each would be skewed by counting two televisions instead of the dozens of eyeballs watching them. Not certain if my theory is correct, but I'm sticking with it until proven wrong.
January 1st, 2016 at 10:33 PM ^
Ass raped sounded stupid huh ... ok whatever. I hadn't seen that terminology used yet to describe the sparty game, so I rolled with it. Was just some sparty jabbing. Lighten up Poindexter...
January 6th, 2016 at 12:23 AM ^
Does anyone know how they do the ratings mathematically?
e.g. if channel hop, or you miss the first quarter, and see the 2nd & 3rd, while watching something else at halftime or toward the end of a blowout.