While Thursday night ratings for the NCAA basketball ratings were extremely disappointing for CBS, the Friday night ratings dropped even further, averaging less than 4 million viewers for the 3 hour prime time period.
While sports channels and their announcers are busy looking at the "huge" upsets, most regular sports fans are turning the channel to find what else is on. As one such fan was quoted as saying, "I haven't watched a minute of the games so far, and I don't feel as if I missed anything."
There really are far too many teams and too many games, and none of them stand out from any of the others. Where ESPN sees upsets, sports fans see mediocrity and a whole lot of sameness. Even bars on Friday night were being asked by patrons to change the channel.
Think about it, there are 32 teams in the entire NFL. There are more than double that in this tournament. Fans aren't seeing upsets, they are seeing the simple mathematical odds of what happens when so many teams are involved. And they don't know enough about any of those teams to care if they win or not.
Obviously the ratings will start to rise as more teams are eliminated, but that's what I've been saying al along. A sixteen team tournament would be preferable, and an 8 team tournament would be even better. The best of the best, where every game matters, and the regular season was important.
Kind of like college football was with the BCS.
College basketball gets one game a year with over 15 million viewers. College football has games with that kind of viewership every single week.
I said it yesterday and I'm going to repeat it today.
Sometimes less is more.
I've also said DON'T change the football BCS system. Too many teams spoil the madness.
No comments:
Post a Comment