NBC’s Sunday Night Football saw a ratings CRASH on opening night

It was the Cowboys versus the Rams last night on NBC’s Sunday Night Football, but early ratings show a big drop from last year:

DEADLINE – Even with the usual ratings gold of Jerry Jones’ team on the field, the NFL and NBC didn’t get that win – at least not in the early numbers. Despite two teams with big national followings, SNF snared a 4.7 in early ratings among adults 18-49 and 14.81 million viewers last night.

In numbers certain to change, that’s a fall of 28% in the demo and a hard decline of 23% in sets of eyeballs from the early numbers of the the September 8, 2019 SNF season debut. While the early Nielsen data lacks West Coast numbers — kind of important when you have a team from the Los Angeles market in the mix — his result is going to be hard pill for the NFL and NBC to swallow.

To add further context, last year’s opener, a 33-3 pummeling of the Pittsburgh Steelers by then reigning Super Bowl champs the New England Patriots, went on to pull in an audience of 22.2 million on NBC, which was pretty much even with SNF’s 2018 season premiere. That 2019 figure inched up to 22.7 million when digital platform viewing was added in.

It’s clear that people just aren’t watching like they used to and that’s a big deal because the Cowboys are normally a big draw, especially now that they have a legendary head coach. But who can blame them with all of the BLM garbage and the National Anthem kneeling going around the league.

As a Cowboy fan I did watch most of the game, but I missed the beginning. It’s doubtful that I’ll be watching games like I’ve done in previous years, especially with the news that my Panthers kneeled for the National Anthem yesterday. I also saw that the Ravens stood for the ‘black national anthem’ and kneeled for the real national anthem.

Yeah no thanks.


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