NFL TV Ratings Are Down 10% This Season. Why?

By JIM PURCELL

Why are NFL Football television ratings down this season? Yes, almost unbelievably, NFL Football viewership, during regular season games, is down 10 percent. But, the news gets even worse for one of America's top brands.

According to Felix Gillette, a staffer at Bloomberg Businessweek, Monday Night Football ratings are down 20 percent this year over this time last year. Sunday Night Football has also fallen 18.5 percent in viewership. Meanwhile, Thursday night viewership of games is down 21.8 percent.

Has the NFL become just another product on the metaphorical television shelves this year? Was it interest over election coverage this year that brought down viewership? Were Americans fed up with 49er QB Colin Kaepernick's regular injections of politics into the sport? Has the NFL Commissioner's Office involved itself too much with the game? Has the game become too legislated in the board room, at the expense of entertaining crowds on the field?

Colin Kapernick and teammate 'protest' their politics. 

For years in the communications industry in the United States, NFL Football has been the engine that made television 'work' for advertisers who pushed everything from beer to razor blades on TV. Now, there is a blowback.

Has the game suffered from over-saturation. Has the NFL finally reached its tipping point the way that anything else that has become over-watched and over-seen has?

In offering my own take on the NFL ratings, I see a few logs to toss onto the fire. First, who is an American is changing. With influxes of new populations into the United States, the American game of football may not be all that interesting to some of our newer Americans -- who may have more of an interest in European football, known as soccer in the U.S.? In addition, the times of games have become increasingly later and later.

Goodell: Too much a part of the sport?

I am an NFL Football fan and why don't I watch my Jets get bludgeoned every week on television? Because I have to work and I don't want to stay up half the night and go without sleep the next day just to do it.

The NFL has also changed in that, as well as protecting players more due to head traumas, it has actively frowned at football players as entertainers. Excessive celebrations have become a sure-fire way to draw penalties. Crowd-pleasing antics have become forbidden.

It is good that head trauma is being examined. The health of players is and should be of paramount importance. Maybe America is just growing a conscience about watching grown men become debilitated.

Whatever the reason, the result is clear: Fewer people are watching NFL Football today than ever before. This is a sea-change in the industry of advertising the world over, not just in the United States. Is there anything that can 'fix it' and bring NFL viewership back to its recent heyday? Good questions going forward.