Fox, Nfc Have Viewers’ Edge
Funny how ratings work. Last season, you had to go to NBC to get Fox’s NFL ratings. This season, you’ve got to go to Fox to get NBC’s.
What is it they say on the street? What goes around comes around?
In 1994, NBC’s final season ratings average was 12.5, compared with Fox’s 12.1, giving NBC’s AFC package its first ratings victory since 1975. This season, Fox’s NFC package is ahead 12.6-10.9 through 13 weeks.
“The bottom line is, the quality of games drives the ratings,” Fox Sports executive producer Ed Goren said. “I guess we found the church that NBC prayed in last year.”
What pleases Fox even more is that ratings this season are 1 percent better than what CBS did with the same NFC package in 1993.
And that’s despite the fact television’s two largest market cities - New York and Los Angeles - are without professional football teams.
“For us to have our ratings in demographics and households up even a tick from what CBS had is very satisfying,” Goren said.
Although blowouts and scheduling quirks were blamed for most of Fox’s ratings troubles last year, the network’s newcomer status was partially to blame.
“I think there’s some of that. We’ve strengthened our affiliate lineup in certain ways, and I think we’ve very quickly established ourselves as a national sports entity,” Goren said. “So, people are a little more familiar with us.
“Frankly, the biggest thing we’ve had to live with during our NFL contract has been the fact that the NFC East is not the powerhouse it was through those CBS years. That was always their anchor and strength. You could take Dallas and the Giants or the Eagles or the Redskins, and if you paired any two of them, you had a ball game of national interest.”
“We haven’t had to talk about ratings this year at all,” Goren said. “It has been a non-issue.”
Out takes
For the record, NBC points out that while its AFC ratings are off from last year, it’s not so much this is a bad year as it is 1994 was a great year.
In fact, similar to Fox, NBC’s 13-week average actually is up 1 percent from 1993’s AFC average of 10.8.
NBC’s Marv Albert won a fifth straight Cable Ace award during the weekend in L.A. for his play-by-play work on Madison Square Garden Network, for whom he calls the New York Knicks.
In accepting the award, Albert said: “There were a lot of talented people nominated, but what I think probably put me over the top was my recently discovered duet with John Lennon.”
David Michaels, a producer at NBC Sports since 1990, has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement award from the U.S. Cycling Federation. Michaels, who producers NFL games and the Breeders’ Cup for NBC, won six Emmies for the Tour de France while at CBS in the 1980s.
Imagine Joe Namath and Gale Sayers on the same team. The Classic Sports Network did. They are two of the charter members of its Board of Champions, recently named to serve as a creative resource for the cable network.
Also named to the board were Ernie Banks, Ted Williams, Magic Johnson and Mary Lou Retton.
The board will consult on editorial and programming policies of the network, billed as television’s only 24-hour all-sports hall of fame.
Spike Lee is earning quite a reputation in sports circles as a New York Knicks fan, a Nike spokesman, and soon as a film biographer of Jackie Robinson. Dec. 26, HBO will feature a Lee directed-written profile of Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson on “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.”
“Spike Lee is a remarkable, singular talent who possesses a unique vision and interpretation of professional and amateur sports,” HBO Sports executive producer Ross Greenburg said.
This year, it was moved from Texas to California. Next year, the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf, shown live on ABC, will be played a month earlier, March 22-24, at PGA West in La Quinta, Calif.
The Legends tournament was the event that sparked creation of the Seniors Tour.