Why NFL ratings are up in 2018 & Did ESPN get too political?

Sports Media with Richard Deitsch

Audacy

News, Business News, Sports, Sports News

4.3 • 721 Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2018

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode 25 of the Sports Media Podcast features Sports Business Daily media writer John Ourand for a discussion on the latest sports media news. In this podcast, Ourand and Deitsch discuss the current NFL viewership numbers and why they are up from 2017; whether the league can sustain the ratings through the end of the regular season; the impact of quarterbacks, competitive games, and news fatigue on the viewership; the World Series matchup between the Dodgers and Red Sox and what kind of interest there will be nationally; a look at Fox’s MLB pregame show; the NBA viewership numbers from the opening week of the season and the impact of LeBron James moving from the Eastern to Western Conference; whether the Boston Celtics can fill the TV role that Cleveland played last year with James; Ourand’s interview with ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro; the stylistic difference between Pitaro and John Skipper; Pitaro’s discussion with Ourand on the role of political talk and ESPN and the impact it had; the opposing views of Ourand and Deitsch on covering politics at ESPN; Ourand’s piece on Around The Horn and how that show will move to ESPN’s Seaport studios in lower Manhattan and will use a new graphics package that will employ augmented reality; the impact of Tony Reali as a host; whether PTI can last post-Wilbon and Kornhesier and much more. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and more. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the sports media podcast. I'm Richard Deich. My producer, as always, is Lou Pellegrino. Our guest this week is a very familiar voice. It is John O'Rand of the Sports Business Daily and Journal. Their media reporter, he's been a guest on this podcast. And the podcast I had Sports Illustrated, probably more than any other guest. And today, as part of our media discussion roundtable, John is a solo guest.
0:23.3	So he's not sharing the spotlight with the Jamel Hill or Kate Abdo or Troy Aikman or anyone else.
0:30.3	It is John O'Rand in the spotlight in the A chair.
0:33.0	John, welcome to the sports media podcast.
0:35.8	Boy, that is, what an opening that is.
0:38.4	I can't, I got to live up to that.
0:40.8	Well, yeah, I mean, Pellegrino's there, too, so I guess it could be all of us.
0:44.0	Yeah, Lou, jump in whenever I start to flounder.
0:48.6	There's a lot to get to because you have been very busy from interviewing Jimmy Pitaro at conferences to I know you're now
0:55.8	part of the Around the Horn PR team. So we have a lot to get to. But first off, here's
1:02.0	where I want to start with. I want to start with NFL ratings because this has really been an
1:07.4	incredible success story. And we, when you, we, we, we have talked on multiple
1:12.3	podcasts about this, including this one. And if I remember correctly, both of us thought that
1:16.7	NFL ratings would go down this year. I think both of us thought they wouldn't go down a ton,
1:20.7	but we were, you know, we both thought that, um, given just the trends of last year, uh, having, at least in my opinion, you know, nothing to do with Kaepernick or anything else.
1:33.1	It just, you know, I thought the dynamics of television were going to lead the NFL to continue to go down.
1:39.5	That has not been the case this week, this year.
1:42.4	NFL ratings have risen. They rose again in week seven outside,
1:46.9	I think, of ESPN. Overnights are up year over year, I think, in all seven weeks of the season.
1:56.0	So that's sort of the precursor to this. My thought, John, very quickly, and then I'll let you have the floor,
2:02.0	is that it really comes down to a couple of things, but nothing is bigger than one. The
2:08.5	influx of young quarterbacks in the league, because the league markets quarterbacks,
	...

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