Last night, from 8:30 til 11 I watched TV Land last night, It was a rather enjoyable primetime classic comedy lineup, the evening started with 3 episodes of Designing Women, then from 10 til 11 was a hour block of I Love Lucy. It was a great evening of television, very enjoyable.

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Originally posted by robert:
I'm not a basketball follwer so i don't have any idea, but are these kind of numbers typicall for NBA playoffs? I mean average PGA tournaments get that kind of numbers. And i allways thought basketabll is more popular than golf

Basketball is only a little more popular than Hockey right now. Fans have been turning off the NBA for a few seasons now, so these numbers don't surprise me.

There is a reason that the first couple of rounds of the Playoffs take while so that the Finals can air OUTSIDE of the May Sweeps.

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Originally posted by TV-aholic:

quote:

Originally posted by robert:
I'm not a basketball follwer so i don't have any idea, but are these kind of numbers typicall for NBA playoffs? I mean average PGA tournaments get that kind of numbers. And i allways thought basketabll is more popular than golf

Basketball is only a little more popular than Hockey right now. Fans have been turning off the NBA for a few seasons now, so these numbers don't surprise me.

There is a reason that the first couple of rounds of the Playoffs take while so that the Finals can air OUTSIDE of the May Sweeps.

only a little more popular than hockey? Hockey ratings (NBC games included) don't even come close to NBA ratings (both cable and broadcast). Not to mention that this year's NBA ratings are pretty good (both regular season and playoffs) and are very similar to baseball ratings (with several playoffs games getting bigger ratings than baseball playoffs games last season). This season's 1st round was the highest rated since 1994 and every game is keep putting up big numbers. Game 3 between celtics and pistons is the only exception (along with game 3 between cavs and celtics..and, also that game was aired on saturday night..it's just that saturday night is very bad for tv ratings).

Anyways, say what you will, the NBA game still helped ABC to win the night among adults 18-49..and for awhile it was the most watched program of the night on broadcast. And to the guy who compared the celtics/pistons ratings to golf ratings, I hope you realize that this NBA game aired in PRIMETIME. Golf didn't air in primetime.

And the fact that celtics/pistons was a blowout didn't certainly help the case.

You're right tv123454321, the NBA has been way up this year and it still much more popular than the NHL. I believe last year, most NHL Stanley Cup games were barely pulling over 3 million during weeknights. Should the Lakers pull out the wins over San Antonio (God the Spurs are a boring team), then the NBA could have one highly rated finale this year. Even without, I think it will be better than before as both the Celtics and the Pistons have gained a pretty solid following this year.

What's surprising for me it's that NBA season matches and even playoff matches get lower ratings than an average golf tournament, and the NBA final gets half the numbers a golf major gets. I know NHL is not so popular but i allways thought basketball it's a big deal

The NHL = NBA in popularity argument is based on ticket sales to games, not TV ratings.

Golf gets better ratings because it skews older than the NBA. Much much older. More importantly, there's a subset of individuals (myself included) who only bother watching the end of NBA games because they're usually decided in the waning moments. Hence the growing audience from half-hour to half-hour last night.

But let's also not forget: it was a Saturday night. Unless you're a partisan of the Celtics or Pistons, you weren't skipping out on hitting the date/clubs/bars/ballpark to watch the game Saturday night. If TNT had aired a game on Saturday night, I'd reckon the ratings would've been about the same (they lose viewers by being cable but gain viewers due to the better matchup).

EDIT: Also, Golf rarely has any competition because it airs during the day, whereas most of the playoff games are airing at night.

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Originally posted by ChrTh:
The NHL = NBA in popularity argument is based on ticket sales to games, not TV ratings.

Golf gets better ratings because it skews older than the NBA. Much much older. More importantly, there's a subset of individuals (myself included) who only bother watching the end of NBA games because they're usually decided in the waning moments. Hence the growing audience from half-hour to half-hour last night.

But let's also not forget: it was a Saturday night. Unless you're a partisan of the Celtics or Pistons, you weren't skipping out on hitting the date/clubs/bars/ballpark to watch the game Saturday night. If TNT had aired a game on Saturday night, I'd reckon the ratings would've been about the same (they lose viewers by being cable but gain viewers due to the better matchup).

EDIT: Also, Golf rarely has any competition because it airs during the day, whereas most of the playoff games are airing at night.

The popularity of an event is mainly given by the TV audience. There are plenty of spectators watching hockey in the stadiums, that doesn't make it popular. And please don't give me the demos argument in sports also. A sport is popular based on viewing numbers not based on the age of the viwers. You may say is more profitable beacause younger people wathc it but not more popular. And SB gets thousands of millions of viewers even if you put it at 2 am. That's popularity. If you prefer going to a bar than watching an NBA playoff game than clearly you're not a big fan of the sport (i'm not talinkg about you, i talk in general), and if so many prefer to do that i guess the conclusion is baseketabll isn't such popular as it used to be. I wonder why is that.

quote:

Originally posted by robert:
The popularity of an event is mainly given by the TV audience. There are plenty of spectators watching hockey in the stadiums, that doesn't make it popular. And please don't give me the demos argument in sports also. A sport is popular based on viewing numbers not based on the age of the viwers. You may say is more profitable beacause younger people wathc it but not more popular. And SB gets thousands of millions of viewers even if you put it at 2 am. That's popularity. If you prefer going to a bar than watching an NBA playoff game than clearly you're not a big fan of the sport (i'm not talinkg about you, i talk in general), and if so many prefer to do that i guess the conclusion is baseketabll isn't such popular as it used to be. I wonder why is that.

You missed a point in your diatribe: some people are at the bar actually watching the sport. This has been an argument for awhile: are sports ratings accurately measured since they don't take into account group events (be it at a home or bar/restaurant). I would suggest that golf is one of the few sports where you're less likely to have a bar/group effect, and therefore the ratings for golf are probably correct, but understated for the other sports.

As for basketball's popularity, that has been in decline since Jordan retired (the 2nd time). Some of it was the 'thuggish' nature of its participants. Some of it was the emergence of 'boring' teams (Pistons and especially Spurs). And part of it was the lack of bona fide superstars to ramp up interest (you had a few, but nothing along the lines of Jordan, Bird and Johnson). This year, though, has seen a resurgence in popularity due to the reversal of these trends (well, mostly: the Pistons and Spurs are in the final four teams). 'Thuggery' is down, the MVP race was a wealth of superstars (Kobe's turnaround, Garnett's resurrection, Paul's leap into the top rank), and, well, there's one other factor that the NBA has that the NFL doesn't: regionalism.

The NFL possesses widespread popularity. Even in parts of the country that are hundreds of miles from a team, there will be fans. And even when a team like the Jets sucks, the fans still watch the games, still turn out to the stadiums.

But the NBA doesn't have it. I reckon there are few NBA fans in Fargo. And when a local team sucks, the fans stop watching. This year, though, you had the return of the Celtics (it's not just that Boston is the #5 market, it's the subsidiary fanbase outside the market in New England, even into New York). You had the Lakers (#2 market, plenty of bandwagon fans) with their first real shot at a title since Shaq was traded. The only other factor that would've helped more would be if the Knicks returned to respectability (and don't think Stern hasn't been working on it), and since they finally dumped Isiah, they may be on their way there.

So I actually think the future of the NBA is bright. Talented young superstars, strong fundamental players coming from Europe, and once LeBron ends up in Brooklyn, the biggest star in the biggest city.

EDIT: One last thing I want to add on the subject: TV Ratings are NOT the best way to measure popularity of a sport. With the rise of fantasy sports, involvement in sports goes way beyond watching it on TV. And of course, ratings don't measure people watching MLB.tv or tuning in to specific games in a package deal (which is another place golf has an advantage, since there are rarely weeks with more than one PGA event going on, and the second event always has a much lesser group of players participating). If you go by TV ratings, you would assume that American Idol is more popular than the NFL. It's not.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ChrTh,

I am not sure where this golf comparison is coming from. The Memorial this past weekend had Phil Mickelson winning it and got roughly 2 million viewers.

The first 2 games of the Celtics series had an average of roughly 5.6 million on ESPN on Tues and Thurs. Who the heck stays in on the Saturday night of Memorial Day Weekend and watches the game on Tv unless you are from Boston or Detroit. There are things called bars and alot of them have tv's with sports and everything.

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Originally posted by cubsuck:
I am not sure where this golf comparison is coming from. The Memorial this past weekend had Phil Mickelson winning it and got roughly 2 million viewers.

No Tiger = Lower Ratings. Plus the Memorial isn't one of the top tier events (I'd characterize it as a second tier event).

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Originally posted by tv123454321:
Not to mention that this year's NBA ratings are pretty good (both regular season and playoffs) and are very similar to baseball ratings (with several playoffs games getting bigger ratings than baseball playoffs games last season).

Lets compare apples to apples.

FOX aired 2 ALCS games on Saturday nights, in primetime, last fall.

Game #2 received 8.8 million viewers and a 2.9 demo rating
Game #6 received 11.2 million viewers and a 3.5 demo rating.

I doub't we'll see ANY Eastern Finals NBA game on ABC reach those numbers.