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ratings drop: No sweat
Real test will be over coming several weekends
By Elizabeth White
In general, losing 50 percent of your audience from one week to the next is not a good sign.
And NBC can’t be happy about its Saturday night XFL game earning only a preliminary 5.1/9 household rating and share, after it received a 10.3/17 for its debut game the week before.
On UPN, the XFL game dropped 30 percent in household rating, from last Sunday’s 4.0 to this Sunday’s 2.8.
But in the case of the XFL, that ratings drop doesn’t spell disaster-- at least not yet, say media buyers.
As long as the league doesn’t slip much more in the ratings over the next two or three weeks, they say, the new football league should be on target for a successful season.
"You may not like it, it may not be right for a lot of advertisers, but it is what it is, and it’s delivering what it said it would," says Mark Geller, vice president and media director at GSD&M.
Actually, it has delivered far more.
NBC only guaranteed advertisers a 4.7 household rating, yet the opening game more than doubled most people’s baseline expectation, a feat critics rightly attributed to the massive pre-season hype.
Saturday’s 5.1 is actually more representative of what people thought the XFL would do week after week.
"It was somewhat predictable that the first week would get a good number. It was also predictable that the second week would drop. If they can hold a 4 or 5 rating, they’ll be fine," says Geller.
And in the stadiums attendance was off from last week by only about 9 percent, according to analysts at Paul Kagan Associates. This weekend’s average attendance of nearly 32,000 per game is well above the XFL’s predicted average of 25,000 per game.
For some analysts, that attendance number is just as crucial for the new sports league as the television rating.
"The attendance is going to be the key to this league being successful. This game is about the experience," says John Swift, group director at OMD-USA. "When the stadium is full and everyone’s having a good time, it will look good on TV."
But with only four tenths of a rating point between Saturday’s rating and NBC’s promised rating, the XFL doesn’t have much more room to slip.
"Everything will continue to be analyzed and focus-grouped," says John Rash, senior vice president and director of broadcast negotiations at Campbell Mithun.
"If the ratings continue to decline, a fundamental decision will be made to capitalize on the WWF component or to make this a legitimate football league."
And the XFL still has some serious problems to solve if it wants to keep the audience it still has. In addition to the sub-NFL level of play and annoying sportscasters, NBC experienced technical problems on Saturday that forced it to switch to another game for about 25 minutes.
The games are also running long, disrupting schedules.
NBC and the WWF are working to shorten play time (See news shorts).
"If people aren’t watching because they think it’s an inferior product, then that’s a problem," says Swift. "But if it does mid-fours and has a young audience, then it could be a better buy than the NBA."
And because of that potential for young viewers, folks say that the XFL simply needs to hold steady over the next few weeks.
"They’re getting the ratings and getting the people there. That’s surprised a lot of diehard football fans and critics," says Terri Ritenour, a sports analyst for Paul Kagan Associates. "If it keeps up the attendance and ratings over the next two weeks, it will be in good shape."
-Elizabeth White is a staff writer for Media Life.
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