Despite some rather dull matchups, and the fact that most of the players–if not all, detest playing on Thursday, the ratings continue to be on the rise. But how?
Last season Thursday Night Football ratings jumped after all the nation’s major cable providers began carrying the NFL Network. But in 2013 the ratings have climbed past 2012’s.
The league sent out a press release explaning the ratings boost, via Awful Annoucing:
Including the audience from over-the-air broadcasts in local markets, NFL Network’s 13-game schedule of Thursday Night Football broadcasts finished with a record-high per game average audience of 8 million viewers in 2013, up 10% from 2012, marking the fifth consecutive year that Thursday Night Football has set an all-time high viewership mark for NFL Network.
For the season, Thursday Night Football on NFL Network averaged a 5.0 US HH rating (including OTA’s) – another record for the network – a 9% increase from the 2012 season. Each week of the 2013 Thursday Night Football schedule, NFL Network’s game telecast was the day’s most-watched program on cable television.
No matter how much folks may complain about the Thursday games, the ratings don’t reflect such. No matter how you slice it, whatever the NFL shoves down their fan’s mouth they greedily accept and ask for seconds.