Black Friday will have different meanings to different people this year, for 99.9 percent of American businesses it will be a day when profits soar and businesses finish the year strong.
For the NFL, it will be the day they received yet another reminder that they’re doing the opposite of those things.
In what has become a consistent pattern for the league this year, the NFL put a bad product on the field, insulted the country with another protest by a privileged millionaire, and got a bad television rating. Thanksgiving’s primetime clash between the Redskins and the Giants registered a 9.7 in metered markets, down 10 percent from last year.
While the game stayed steady with last week’s Thursday night match-up, that isn’t really good news for the NFL either. Since, a Thanksgiving Day match-up in primetime absolutely should net a much larger audience than a random Thursday primetime before Thanksgiving.
Though NBC won primetime overall, a not surprising occurrence given that the network which hosts the NFL normally does win in primetime, CBS saw some big increases.
According to Deadline Hollywood, “Coming off the L.A. Chargers 28-6 win over the Dallas Cowboys in the late afternoon, CBS put an almost full slate up last night with Young Sheldon(2.6/11), Mom (1.8/7), Life In Pieces (1.3/5) and S.W.A.T. (1.1/4). That’s a 30% rise over last week’s final numbers for the Big Bang Theory prequel and the best Young Sheldon has done on a Thursday night so far. As for the other trio of CBS offerings, they were up 28%, 18% and 22% respectively.
“Playing the long game, the House of Moonves is proudly flying the flag that compared to Thanksgiving Day 2016, last night saw rises of 48% in viewers and 64% in the key demo for the network.”
The NFL is still on top in the television world, but the distance between them and the rest of the pack is shrinking, quickly.