Is the NFL finally putting its two-year TV slump in the rear view mirror?
The NFL's Week 1 ratings rose 1 percent while viewership remained steady, according to Nielsen Media Research. NFL game telecasts from Thursday through Monday averaged a 9.4 rating and 16.3 million viewers compared with a 9.3 rating and roughly the same amount of average viewers during the first week of the 2017 season.
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The slight ratings increase and flat audience numbers won't set champagne corks popping at the offices of the NFL and TV partners CBS Sports, Fox Sports, NBC Sports, ESPN and NFL Network. But it's better than the league's 10 percent audience swoon last season. Or the 8 percent drop in 2016 that followed a record TV year in 2015.
There was other good news for the nation's most popular and powerful sports league. Some potential new stars emerged for a league that's lost TV draws such as Peyton Manning.
Rookie Jets quarterback Sam Darnold thrilled fans in the nation's largest media market with his 48-17 demolition of the Lions on ESPN's "Monday Night Football." The New York media compared Darnold to the gold standard for Jets QB's: Broadway Joe Namath. QB Patrick Mahomes and speedy WR Tyreek Hill made the Chiefs offense look unstoppable during their 38-28 win over the Chargers. Look for both to get plenty of TV coverage this season.
But the NFL and its TV partners should not get too comfortable entering Week 2, which began with NFL Network's telecast of Ravens-Bengals on "Thursday Night Football."
While football fans tuned in for Sunday afternoon games on CBS and Fox during Week 1, they weren't nearly as interested in the league's prime time games on NBC and ESPN. With Hurricane Florence making landfall this weekend, multiple East Coast games could be impacted. So Week 2 ratings will be a crapshoot.
Still, the NFL's Week 1 ratings offered a "ray of hope," wrote Bloomberg.
CBS led the way Sunday, averaging 17.1 million viewers for its regional games. That was up 29 percent from the average 13.3 million viewers during Week 1 last season. And the network's most-watched NFL opening single-header in 20 years.
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The Cowboys are practically a sure thing when it comes to TV. Despite a poor performance by America's Team in the Cowboys 16-8 loss to the Panthers, Fox averaged 23.3 million viewers, up 2 percent from 22.8 million viewers during the first week of 2017.
But TV numbers for the league's prime time games on NBC on Thursday and Sunday nights and ESPN for its "MNF" double-header slid from the year before. That sparked fresh worries for the NFL community, which is reading the TV tea leaves the way Wall Street honchos watch stock prices.
"Overall, the NFL would have to see Week One as a mixed bag at best," wrote Michael David Smith at ProFootballTalk. "Still, a mixed bag for the NFL would be considered great ratings for anything else on TV. NFL games were easily the most-watched programs on network television last week, and ESPN beat everything on both cable and network TV last night. Ratings remain strong compared to everything else — unless 'everything else' includes NFL ratings from a few years ago."
