Occam's Razor

(Originally posted Wednesday May 28, 2008 @ 04:38 PM EDT athttp://fans.nhl.com/members/JuiceinLA/blogs/15537)

I thought I was the only one running out of things to say, but all of today’s articles – written by the people who get paid for this stuff- are short and redundant.

However, just when I thought they couldn’t find any new negative comments to make about the wings, SI comes out with a doozy: It turns out that its the Wings’ fault that the NHL is a rating nightmare.

It may be the first time in sports history that dominance and excellence in a sport has been blamed for driving fans AWAY.

But now that SI mentions it, I’ve heard that in the years when there is a horse with triple crown winning potential, people take off their derby hats and TV ratings go in the crapper. Mint julep sales tank!

And I have also heard that people here in LA- well they flee from the staples center in droves when the Lakers start winning.

Oh, and lets not forget how many Americans started hating the NFL when the Patriots started winning, and Tom Brady started “dating” Gisele—-

Such a total load of bullshix- yea I swore. I mean it. I could have said something slightly more eloquent and logical along the lines of:

“The very idea that having a consistently dominant team, a team capable of raising the bar for excellence, able to elevate the particular sport to new highs, a team that continually achieves excellence and takes the sport to a new level, has and will continue to precipitate a decline in an entire league’s fanbase and cause rapid decline in television viewership for the whole league- well, that idea can only be proposed and supported by one who clearly spends more time rolling, throwing and/or wallowing in his own bodily waste, than thinking.”

seemed simpler to go with “bullshix”. Occam’s razor baby.

SOOO, now that you know how I’m feeling, How are you all handing the day- are you feeling the same level of excitement and drive as you had going into game 1?

I am looking forward to tonight, and I woke up wondering if the Penguins will have anything they can throw at us. I’d like to see a good game, but there are worse things than watching the Wings host a clinic.

post mortem: Decline in viewership- the numbers dont really play out:

www.nhl.com boasts that Game 2 of these 2008 finals garnered the highest rating for Versus ever, with the following stats:

“VERSUS garnered a 1.9 HH rating and averaged 2,537,560 viewers (P2+) for its Game 2 telecast of the 2008 Stanley Cup Final on Monday, May 26, when the Detroit Red Wings shut out the Pittsburgh Penguins for the second straight game, 3-0, at Joe Louis Arena. Game 2 earned an 11.7 HH rating in Detroit. This is the highest rating ever in the Detroit market for an NHL game on VERSUS.”

A quick review of NBC ratings over the years shows that a typical market share for a regular season NHL game on NBC is about a 0.7-0.9 share or about 600,000-800,000 viewers. The highest regular season game on NBC since the Lockout- one in which Detroit played, garnered 803,000 viewers.

Game 3 of the SCF on NBC in 2006 earned 2.88 million viewers, and a 1.1/ 4 among adults 18–49 from 8–11 p.m.

Further, “The first round of ratings for the 2006 playoffs on NBC were down between 13% and 19% from two years earlier on ABC, and the regular season ratings were more dismal still. The May 13, 2006, Carolina-New Jersey game on a Saturday afternoon had fewer viewers than the surfing competition that was its lead-in. More people watched a poker event that particular weekend than watched that hockey game.”

2.88 million viewers for a Game 3 Network broadcast, “versus” a pay channel getting 2.5 million viewers in 2008 (on a national holiday)- clearly the number of viewers are decreasing(see how I did that- using italics to convey sarcasm, you can practically hear it drip from my voice, no?). Although to be fair, in 2006 as more finals games (4,5,6,7) were played, the number of viewers increased to 3.3 million or so… Still. I fail to see the purported decline that SI insinuates.

If anything the VERSUS numbers should be much less because its a relatively obscure network, that most people don’t even realize they have.

Neither these stats or the SI writer’s article account for the fact that Detroit sports fans have been forced this year to CHOOSE which team to watch: Wings or Pistons. And scheduling is the fault of the NHL- Not Homer (for once!).

Originally o
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