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NBC’s Al Michaels wonders if oversaturation is decreasing NFL TV ratings

Oct 20, 2016, 9:45 AM | Updated: 3:08 pm

Broadcast announcer Al Michaels talks on the sidelines before an NFL football game between the Phil...

Broadcast announcer Al Michaels talks on the sidelines before an NFL football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Arizona Cardinals, Sunday, Dec. 20, 2015, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

(AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

LISTEN: Al Michaels, Sunday Night Football

The Arizona Cardinals are making their third straight primetime television appearance Sunday night when they host the Seattle Seahawks at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale.

It’s the first time in franchise’s regular-season history that the Cardinals will be featured on nationally-televised broadcasts in three straight weeks.

The primetime slot should mean increased viewership for the Cardinals and Seahawks, except national TV ratings are down so far in 2016 — a trend that has commissioner Roger Goodell and the league office wondering what’s wrong.

“It’s something that I don’t think there’s a single reason for. I really don’t. We look at all those factors,” Goodell said at the Fall League Meeting in Houston Wednesday. “Everyone’s got theories, you guys got theories, others got theories. We work closely with our network partners. We see tremendous strength in our numbers. But we also know that the prime time ratings we’re seeing the most dramatic decrease. It went straight up against two very significant debates. Another one of our prime time games on Thursday night was on the NFL Network, as opposed to a network, which will always get a lower rating. There are a lot of factors to be considered.”

Legendary veteran play-by-play man Al Michaels will call the game on NBC Sunday night, and he offered some of his own opinions on why league TV ratings are down in a conversation with Doug and Wolf on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Thursday morning.

“It’s an interesting point, because clearly, the ratings are down a bit,” Michaels said. “I look at it this way: it was either Isaac Newton or Blood, Sweat and Tears — I can’t remember who said it first — ‘what goes up, must come down.’

“The ratings, if you look at the graph through the years, it goes up, up, up, up. There’s a little bit of plateauing from time to time, but now, you finally have that little bit of a drop down. But everything has to be kept in perspective. There’s no denying the ratings are down, however, the last time I looked, which was about a week ago, they listed all 130 shows that are in primetime, what’s number one? It’s Sunday Night Football.”

That was true earlier in the season, but the latest Nielsen ratings tell a different story. NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcast of the game between the Indianapolis Colts and Houston Texans ranked fifth in the week’s standings with an 8.1 rating and an average viewership of 13,595,000 people. That wasn’t even the highest-rated football show of the week; CBS’ Thursday broadcast of the Denver Broncos vs. the San Diego Chargers drew an 8.7 rating and 14,494,000 viewers, which was the week’s second-highest rated show behind CBS’ NCIS.

Michaels offered numerous reasons why he believes the NFL is experiencing a rare dip in television popularity.

“In my mind, I think it’s a compilation of things. A lot of people say that it’s the Colin Kaepernick factor and the ancillary things that revolve around that. Is that true? I don’t know, I think maybe there’s a little bit of that there,” he said.

“There’s a little bit of the fact that for whatever reason, the primetime games have not been that exciting. We had Indianapolis against Houston, which turned about to be a good game, but that’s not the kind of game where you sit around and go ‘I’ve got to watch this game.’ If it’s Green Bay and Dallas, as Fox had in their (Sunday) afternoon window, yeah, that’s a game you want to watch. If we had that game on a Sunday night, our rating would have been higher.”

Some have suggested there is simply too much football available to the American television viewer. Even if viewers are not subscribers to the NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV, which offers all games at a premium, they’ve got access to as many as five games per week over three days on the calendar.

“I think the league needs to be very careful at this point about the oversaturation,” Michaels said. “The Thursday night games, and I understand this, and it’s a great revenue source for the league, etcetera, etcetera, and the ratings are pretty in regard to what the rest of television provides for you on a Thursday night, but I think you’ve got to be careful.

“I’m not really one to pay much attention to comments on blogs and things, but Mike Florio, who does Pro Football Talk and works for us at NBC, if you look at his comments, a lot of them are very literate. It’s not just people calling in and writing stupid things. It’s pretty interesting. They’re grammatically correct, people putting their words together precisely and I’m looking at some of the comments when they get to talking about the overexposure of the National Football League — and then you’ve got the ‘thumbs up, thumbs down’ thing — and it’s like 30 to one thumbs up. People are agreeing with the fact that you have an oversaturation factor developing in the National Football League right now, so they’ve got to be careful.”

Michaels, Cris Collinsworth and Michelle Tafoya will handle the Cardinals-Seahawks broadcast on Sunday Night Football, with kickoff scheduled at 5:25 p.m. Radio listeners can hear the broadcast with Dave Pasch and Ron Wolfley on the call on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM, with pregame coverage starting at 12:30 p.m.

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NBC’s Al Michaels wonders if oversaturation is decreasing NFL TV ratings