The NFL community and their friends in Big Media thought they had it all figured out.
Present a “unified” face against President Trump and other conservatives.
Triumphantly defend the right for players to kneel or otherwise protest the national anthem.
Chirp that the controversy would actually increase interest and TV ratings.
Except the NFL forgot just one thing…the FANS!
READ MORE: Colin Kaepernick Files Grievance Against NFL, Claims It’s Trump’s Fault He’s Not Playing!
Last night’s Monday Night Football broadcast only achieved a pitiful 6.1 in metered markets, Deadline Hollywood reported on Tuesday.
And the bad news doesn’t stop there. More from Breitbart:
The Week 6 game fell over 3% from the October 17, 2016, game between the Arizona Cardinals and the New York Jets. This year’s Week 6 saw a season low with a 3.0 among the 18-49 age demographic and only 8.4 million viewers.
The bad showing is only a small part of the 12 percent tumble that Week 6 took over last year’s ratings. This week’s 8.4 million viewers was also a drop from last Monday’s 10.3 million viewers. Though, as Deadline noted, last Monday featured the debut of the new Star Wars: The Last Jedi movie trailer, and that might have helped boost the numbers.
Week 6 also featured broadcasters, including ESPN who owns the rights to Monday Night Football, making the decision not to show the national anthem. Instead of airing the anthem, CBS, Fox, and NBC aired commercials.
This isn’t really a “new” thing, though, as airing commercials during the anthem was the usual broadcasting practice for years. The networks only began airing the anthem when players began protesting it.
Ratings have been bad across all the NFL’s partner networks. At CBS, for instance, things have gotten so bad that investors are even being warned the network could find a 3 percent loss of advertising revenue. Another report recently noted that the networks could lose up to $200 million in earnings, due to the NFL ratings crash.
The September report claimed that CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC could take a $200 million hit to their estimated $2.5 billion in NFL advertising earnings if fans continue to turn off their TVs.
NFL owners are meeting this week to discuss how to deal with the fan exodus.
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