How come in the Jordan era they had better TV ratings then now?

[bdreason]

Because the NBA was better in the late 80's and early 90's.

[Pinkhearts]

so Two and a Half Men in its prime with Charlie had higher ratings than Game 5 week after week...

[RaininTwos]

It's not just the Super Bowl.

Check out ratings for the AFC/NFC Championships.... the Divisional round... Hell, a regular season game.

Football blows everything else out of the water and there is no argument otherwise.

To put things in perspective for you... Game 5 of the Finals, which everyone knew could be the final game of the season... It had, what? A rating of a little over 12?

They said that the game was seen by 18.5 million viewers. That was the close-out game and everyone knew that it could be the final game.


The NFC Wildcard Playoff Game this past NFL season was seen by 39.3 million viewers... Over double Game 5. And, that was for a first round playoff game.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/...011-television


To drive the point home even more, a Redskins/Cowboys regular season game on Monday Night Football last year... REGULAR SEASON... had 17.1 million viewers... Which was higher than the average rating for the five Heat/Thunder games in the Finals.

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/201...iewers/115523/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/sp...v-ratings.html


In other words... Don't f#ck with the NFL.

Good info, the NFL is King in North America. We all know that I was just shocked at how absurd the line of questioning Don Dadda kept presenting.

[JMT]

Even the extremely casual fan (my grandmother) knew who Jordan was, marveled at his athleticism and found him likable. Very similar to Tiger Woods pre-hydrant.

Today many casual fans tune in to root against James. The draw of a negative isn't as strong as that of a positive.

As others noted, more fans watch online. Also there are more channels/networks and entertainment options.

Also don't diminish the negative impact of supposed "fans" who cry incessantly about games and draft lotteries being fixed. If you don't really have a strong rooting interest and are thinking about checking it out, that's enough to dissuade you.

[jt21]

Part of the reason I don't find it as enjoyable is that NBA is no longer shown on NBC. NBA on NBC was amazing with the theme song and the great match ups every weekend. ESPN/ABC and TNT are ok but don't come close to NBC's presentation during the late 90's IMO (much of that is the theme song).

I can't remember off the top of my head what it was like 10-15 years ago, but I'd also say that currently it seems that players are more concerned with getting to the foul line and manipulating the referees than creating good shots.

Using the pump fake as an example, I don't remember what it was like in the Jordan era, but now the pump fake is used exclusively to get the defender into the air and flop into him for a foul, rather than using it to drive and get a better shot.

It's much less enjoyable to watch when the game is interrupted by a foul call every single possession. Some of that has to do with the rule changes(i.e. handcheck), but a lot of it is just an overall player mentality. The vast majority of "star" players spend almost every single transition period complaining to the refs instead of just running back on D.

[StarJordan]

- The NBA was in trouble in the late 70s for the same reasons it was in trouble in the mid2000s...league was seen as too black and basically had a coke-snorting image
- Coming of larry Bird (being a white superstar) in early 80s was a turnaround point in ratings for the casual basketball fans, ie mostly white fans of the time. His rivarly with magic johnson on the other side of the country created the initial boost, and then people stayed because 80s basketball was pretty good. They became NBA fans.
- By 1984 though, Jordan had entered the league and and he created a different kind of fan following than lakers vs celtics. Jordan had a spectacular game and a superstar personality that would cross over.....magic had a spectacular game but he wasn't a smooth talker or witty like jordan.....bird was smart but didn't have the spectacular game like jordan....jordan had the entire package on and off the court...and persona wise, outside of him, only Charles Barkley has. With some help from Nike, Jordan by mid-late 80s was the top star of the league, getting the most votes at the all star game etc and air jordan brand was on parallel with rest of nba. Also with jordan came barkley and stockton and mullin and nba had a pretty solid transition into the next decade
-But the league's and basketball's popularity really peaked during 1991-1993 imo, especially during the dream team phase. Both nationally and internationally. Ratings for nba finals peaked in 1998. But interms of basketball on the playgrounds and overall hype, it was probably around '92-93...basketball became the cool sport to play in america....and michael jordan had a lot to do with that. Also to a lesser extent pippen, barkley, ewing, robinson, mullin, regiie miller and those type of stars of that era. Many of those guys are on tnt today interstingly and still popular.

That said, I wanna add that lebron and wade and bosh and durant have similar appeal as the non-jordan stars of that prime era. Dwade, lebron these guys are popular for sure. And their basketball is also not bad either, so its not like you're going to get nba finals with ratings <10 anytime soon with this crew in the finals. Like i said, when a finals with oklahoma city can do well, then the nba is doing pretty good.

[DonDadda59]

Good info, the NFL is King in North America. We all know that I was just shocked at how absurd the line of questioning Don Dadda kept presenting.

So you agree with RBA but my reasoning, which is the same as RBA's, is 'absurd'? Does not compute

People are really reaching for excuses here. Anyone who was around for the Jordan phenomena knows why the interest just isn't there nowadays like it used to be. ESPN, ABC, etc knows the reason as well which is why they're still looking for the 'next Jordan' (looks like they've given up on Kobe and now Lebron gets all the comparisons).

But all that aside... I was just hoping that all the 'internet, cable, more entertainment' caused the NBA's decline would be able to explain why the NFL keeps growing in popularity and viewership while facing the same obstacles. Also would be nice for someone to explain why the NBA experienced massive drop offs in viewership that coincided with Jordan's retirements in '94 and '99.

[Heilige]

How do you expect casual fans to connect to the NBA and it's teams when 99% of it's games are shown on cable networks. Games broadcast over the air on local networks are far and few in between.

Most of the playoffs are on cable networks until the Finals. Not exactly easy to connect to these teams.

The NFL broadcast EVERY playoff game on local networks. This makes it easy for people to follow in the postseason.

Don't most people have cable?

[RaininTwos]

So you agree with RBA but my reasoning, which is the same as RBA's, is 'absurd'? Does not compute

People are really reaching for excuses here. Anyone who was around for the Jordan phenomena knows why the interest just isn't there nowadays like it used to be. ESPN, ABC, etc knows the reason as well which is why they're still looking for the 'next Jordan' (looks like they've given up on Kobe and now Lebron gets all the comparisons).

But all that aside... I was just hoping that all the 'internet, cable, more entertainment' caused the NBA's decline would be able to explain why the NFL keeps growing in popularity and viewership while facing the same obstacles. Also would be nice for someone to explain why the NBA experienced massive drop offs in viewership that coincided with Jordan's retirements in '94 and '99.

You question was asinine. That's like in a topic about the 2008 recession, people talk about how sales went down and you keep asking "How come the Iphone still sold like crazy?" or in a thread about declining record sales, you ask "How come Adele's '21' is still selling millions of copies?".

That's just being stupid, there is no comparison. You know it, I know it, we all do.

Why are wasting time asking? The NBA and NFL are not the same, so why would you expect challenges to NBA ratings to apply to NFL ratings?

The NFL is obviously the exception.

All RBA did was provide info just to show how much of an exception the NFL is.

[Soundwave]

Jordan was far more popular with casual fans/non-fans, hence the Bulls would get a large ratings boost.

LeBron is good but he's really not even close in popularity with fringe/non-fans.

Jordan was a global icon ala a Michael Jackson/Princess Diana/etc. for his time.

Things were just different back then.

[senelcoolidge]

Yeah, it was because of Jordan. But than again there was better star power, league was just better, better competition..etc.