One obvious factor for the decline is the protests of players not standing for the national anthem. But, if you look closer there are other causes:

1 ) Offensive line play appears horrible round the league.
2 ) There appear to be no dominant teams. There aren't really many teams I'd consider good.
3 ) I've read speculation that the slotted rookie contracts in the CBA have made teams top heavy and cut out the middle. Why would teams pay a guy $3-4 million when they could draft a rookie and pay him $400k?
4 ) QB play in the league appears down
5 ) Rules appear to be called inconsistently

Any other things you notice? Thoughts?


http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/21056998/nfl-ratings-75-percent-week-6-2017-compared-2016

Perhaps enough people are beginning to see just how much the league is involved in tilting the favor to certain teams **cough cough squeelers cough cough** and having certain teams take a dive..
It doesn't have to be the entire team taking the dive either, just a few key players or mystery penalties and /or suspensions.. As far as the anthem thing that was just a piece of the age old strategy of the ruling class to divide and conquer and the public eats it up every f**king time like clockwork. Anyone who doesn't see how divide and conquer works has no business even commenting on public issues. It's worked since, well....forever. It works in the league as well. Ownership let it go on to see it work to perfection. Some players 'took a knee', some locked arms blah blah blah and the whole thing worked perfectly to divide the players union. We're sold the same old song and dance of patriotism, nationalism, religious rights and freedoms and the public gets split up into several factions while the ruling classes run off with all the money. Think about it for a second. If a city won't support team ownership the team always has the option of packing up and moving to another city that will fund the whole shebang, stadiums and all.  If the voters in Hamilton county decided that they were never going to give the Bengals another plug nickel Mike Brown and company would pack up and leave town before you could say MB sucks and you all know it. They'd find another town and crop of dummies to swear allegiance to Mikey and stripes if they even kept the name. Hell, the Browns moved to Baltimore to become the Ravens.. Of course Cleveland got a new team, but they've been run like a dumpster fire ever since.

If that involves Canada as well, I wouldn't be surprised, as the NFL signed a contract with DAZN ("The Zone") for the next 5 years, to exclusively show games and we lost Sunday Ticket as a result.

Its streaming only, which put a lot of people off and they had MAJOR issues showing games for the first week, plus login issues, etc., which caused many to rescind their memberships and not watch at home.

If so though, that would only account for a small fraction, but that is an issue.

(10-18-2017, 09:38 AM)THE PISTONS Wrote: One obvious factor for the decline is the protests of players not standing for the national anthem. But, if you look closer there are other causes:

1 ) Offensive line play appears horrible round the league.
2 ) There appear to be no dominant teams. There aren't really many teams I'd consider good.
3 ) I've read speculation that the slotted rookie contracts in the CBA have made teams top heavy and cut out the middle. Why would teams pay a guy $3-4 million when they could draft a rookie and pay him $400k?
4 ) QB play in the league appears down
5 ) Rules appear to be called inconsistently

Any other things you notice? Thoughts?


http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/21056998/nfl-ratings-75-percent-week-6-2017-compared-2016

Changes to the Game...
The Players themselves and all the trouble they get into has been lowering ratings for a few years

Protest added to it.  

I haven't watched less than normal  I still watch most of the bengals game and little else.

(10-18-2017, 09:38 AM)THE PISTONS Wrote: One obvious factor for the decline is the protests of players not standing for the national anthem. But, if you look closer there are other causes:

1 ) Offensive line play appears horrible round the league.
2 ) There appear to be no dominant teams. There aren't really many teams I'd consider good.
3 ) I've read speculation that the slotted rookie contracts in the CBA have made teams top heavy and cut out the middle. Why would teams pay a guy $3-4 million when they could draft a rookie and pay him $400k?
4 ) QB play in the league appears down
5 ) Rules appear to be called inconsistently

Any other things you notice? Thoughts?


http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/21056998/nfl-ratings-75-percent-week-6-2017-compared-2016

My main gripe has to be the penalties. Nearly any time there is a big play, there is a pretty good chance there was a flag thrown. It really takes the excitement out of the game when it's penalty after penalty. All the flags often put the outcome of the game in the hands of the refs. And a lot of these penalties are subjective, especially hard hits. There should be three challenges added just for penalties per half.

It seems like college calls fewer penalties than NFL does, but maybe that's because of fewer penalties actually being committed rather than the NFL refs just being more nitpicky vs college refs. But if feels like the college refs allow more things to go unless they are blatant. Anyone else notice this?

Whether or not the league wants to admit it, the protests during the National Anthem turned a lot of people off. I'm going to the game against Indianapolis because we bought the tickets long ago, but if it were today I would not buy them (even though to date, none of the Bengals have knelt during the anthem that I know if) . I'll still watch my Bengals on free tv, but the league is done getting money from me until they put an end to it. I guess the players are too stupid to realize their future contracts will be based on league earnings, and they aren't doing anything in the long run except costing themselves and their team mates money. Other than that, I like the fact their are no dominate teams. There should be somewhat parity among the teams to ensure good games. I am turned off by the officiating bias, as I am sure others are. SO, while I used to watch as many games as I could on a weekend, I now watch the Bengals when they are on and that's about it.

(10-18-2017, 10:22 AM)ochocincos Wrote: My main gripe has to be the penalties. Nearly any time there is a big play, there is a pretty good chance there was a flag thrown. It really takes the excitement out of the game when it's penalty after penalty. All the flags often put the outcome of the game in the hands of the refs. And a lot of these penalties are subjective, especially hard hits. There should be three challenges added just for penalties per half.

It seems like college calls fewer penalties than NFL does, but maybe that's because of fewer penalties actually being committed rather than the NFL refs just being more nitpicky vs college refs. But if feels like the college refs allow more things to go unless they are blatant. Anyone else notice this?

The issue too is that we are all watching on giant HD TVs and each call is shown from 10 angles and the video of said call is available on the internet for instant access immediately and forever onward and so on and so forth.  

Let's also admit that fans are extremely biased when it comes to seeing flags.  Fans can complain about the NFL throwing too many flags all they want all week long, but the second their QB gets taken down on 3rd down but they get a 15 yard "roughing the passer" flag instead of the punting unit they go ballistic with joy.

I'll admit the fact that there is a flag on virtually every punt return is annoying, but I'll be damned if I don't hear some uproarious cheers when a flag is thrown against the opposing team.  

MNF, SNF, CBS and Fox all saw their NFL ratings decline last year, and the trend has continued through this year.                            
When you combine the number of people abandoning cable and satellite (projected to be 22 million this year alone) with the steady rise in people watching games via streaming sites, it's easy to see why the NFL's numbers are taking a hit.

Then of course, there's the fact that many feel the game is becoming harder to watch, in general, for a number of different reasons - and they're simply tuning out more often.

Even after the whole protest thing has passed, the NFL will still has some very real challenges when it comes to retaining viewers going forward, especially considering the ever-evolving (and nontraditional) media trends and options.

(10-18-2017, 10:29 AM)Nately120 Wrote: The issue too is that we are all watching on giant HD TVs and each call is shown from 10 angles and the video of said call is available on the internet for instant access immediately and forever onward and so on and so forth.  

Let's also admit that fans are extremely biased when it comes to seeing flags.  Fans can complain about the NFL throwing too many flags all they want all week long, but the second their QB gets taken down on 3rd down but they get a 15 yard "roughing the passer" flag instead of the punting unit they go ballistic with joy.

I'll admit the fact that there is a flag on virtually every punt return is annoying, but I'll be damned if I don't hear some uproarious cheers when a flag is thrown against the opposing team.  

Good points. What kind of irritates me is that the fans have a better view of what is/isn't a penalty when viewing on TV/computers over the refs who are on the field because of the picture quality and camera angles. You'd think that the NFL would adapt that technology into calling penalties the first time since it's better than what a ref can actually see on the field. Have the refs just be there primarily to set the ball and keep the players separated. Take some of their power away.

(10-18-2017, 10:32 AM)Bengalholic Wrote: MNF, SNF, CBS and Fox all saw their NFL ratings decline last year, and the trend has continued through this year.                            
When you combine the number of people abandoning cable and satellite (projected to be 22 million this year alone) with the steady rise in people watching games via streaming sites, it's easy to see why the NFL's numbers are taking a hit.

Then of course, there's the fact that many feel the game is becoming harder to watch, in general, for a number of different reasons - and they're simply tuning out more often.

Even after the whole protest thing has passed, the NFL will still has some very real challenges when it comes to retaining viewers going forward, especially considering the ever-evolving (and nontraditional) media trends and options.

Yep, the NFL is part of that pay-TV realm that has been losing traction for years.  When your options for watching football are either pay for an entire cable package or look it up on a pirated internet site...well, it's not a hard decision for many.  I'm 35 and a lot of people I know who all have real jobs and homes and lives don't have cable.  The concept of not having cable used to be insane...it was just for people who lived in the boonies and/or were dirt poor, but it's just not something people have for the sake of having anymore.

It's pretty similar to what happened to the music industry. People didn't abandon music, but a loss of overall revenue for the common american and the availability of things for free via the internet (plus a mix of corporate greed and consumer greed) changed the entire music-making business model. No longer do people have to wait in line and pay $18 for a new CD, so revenue streams needed to change in order to keep money flowing.

(10-18-2017, 10:18 AM)XenoMorph Wrote: Changes to the Game...
The Players themselves and all the trouble they get into has been lowering ratings for a few years

Protest added to it.  

I haven't watched less than normal  I still watch most of the bengals game and little else.

You know, the rule changes definitely get me. Like when a sack gets negated because the QB got tackled wrong. But the worst part about the rule changes is the judgment calls used to enforce them.

2 words..

Red Zone

Edit... it's actually 1 word

RedZone

(10-18-2017, 11:13 AM)THE PISTONS Wrote: You know, the rule changes definitely get me. Like when a sack gets negated because the QB got tackled wrong. But the worst part about the rule changes is the judgment calls used to enforce them.

True, but I assure you this season's viewership is also going to go down because JJ Watt, Aaron Rodgers, ODB Jr. and so on are gone for the year.  People gripe about too many sissy rules but as soon as their QB goes down for the year suddenly it's time to re-evaluate how they are spending their Sundays.

I'm in Steeler country and I've already seen people backing away from the Steelers in preparation for their eventual gap at QB.

Too many commercials has really dampened my interest in watching. I'll try to watch the Bengals every week, but I'm less inclined to watch the prime-time games. Plus Hockey season is back, and it's way more exciting to watch than football.

People like to attribute the decline in viewership to Colin Kaepernick, though it's likely not the case. I'm sure it's had a bit of an impact, but I'd bet a testicle that it hasn't caused a 7% decline in ratings. Most people are all talk....they don't follow through with their boycotts.

I think "cutting the cord" and the decline in the quality of the game are the most likely culprits for this.

(10-18-2017, 11:16 AM)Bengalbug Wrote: 2 words..

Red Zone

Edit... it's actually 1 word

RedZone

I was just thinking this...I watch very little of the actual games besides the Bengals...but I keep RedZone on all day to see the highlights...It's better then watching the games!

(10-18-2017, 11:26 AM)Johnny Cupcakes Wrote: People like to attribute the decline in viewership to Colin Kaepernick, though it's likely not the case.  I'm sure it's had a bit of an impact, but I'd bet a testicle that it hasn't caused a 7% decline in ratings.  Most people are all talk....they don't follow through with their boycotts.

I think "cutting the cord" and the decline in the quality of the game are the most likely culprits for this.

I think you're underestimating the KaeperDICK effect. Of the 5 guys in my office who are huge football fans, 3 have completely quit watching and are trying to become soccer fans so they have something to watch.....

(10-18-2017, 11:24 AM)Aquapod770 Wrote: Too many commercials has really dampened my interest in watching. I'll try to watch the Bengals every week, but I'm less inclined to watch the prime-time games. Plus Hockey season is back, and it's way more exciting to watch than football.

You can watch almost 7 hours of football with ZERO commercials via Redzone.

It's something like 38 hours worth of ads over the course of a season.

(10-18-2017, 11:29 AM)Sled21 Wrote: I think you're underestimating the KaeperDICK effect. Of the 5 guys in my office who are huge football fans, 3 have completely quit watching and are trying to become soccer fans so they have something to watch.....

Most of the faux patriots that I have regular contact with (I'm in construction, so it's a very large percentage of my coworkers) are all talk.  On Friday, they talk about how they'll be boycotting the NFL, and on Monday, they talk about what pissed them off in various NFL games.

I know my small sample size is not indicative of the whole, but I have a hard time believing that there is a massive difference in the whole populace.

People are grandstanding....it's nothing but social media posturing to show your friends what side you're on.

(10-18-2017, 10:22 AM)ochocincos Wrote: My main gripe has to be the penalties. Nearly any time there is a big play, there is a pretty good chance there was a flag thrown. It really takes the excitement out of the game when it's penalty after penalty. All the flags often put the outcome of the game in the hands of the refs. And a lot of these penalties are subjective, especially hard hits. There should be three challenges added just for penalties per half.

It seems like college calls fewer penalties than NFL does, but maybe that's because of fewer penalties actually being committed rather than the NFL refs just being more nitpicky vs college refs. But if feels like the college refs allow more things to go unless they are blatant. Anyone else notice this?

This is pretty much my thought also. Also, there seems to be to many ticky tack stuff called. One example is WJIII getting called for 12 men on the field only because his foot hadn't touch the ground yet although he was clearly over the sideline. If I remember right, that kept the Packers drive alive. 

I personally, don't watch to much NFL unless the Bengals are on anymore. Maybe it is a generational thing. Younger people aren't into football like the older people are. My kids are in their 20's an don't watch it, yet both played and loved it. Just found better things to do I guess.