It’s that time again: Let’s pick apart the NFL’s declining ratings so we can ultimately blame Colin Kaepernick and the players’ protests against civil inequality! Hurray! The 2018 season’s first Sunday Night Football airing, a back-and-forth, drama-filled matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears, snagged a 14.4/25 in metered market results, according to Deadline. That equates to just north of 22 million viewers, which easily won NBC the prime-time lineup but actually represents a 9 percent dip from 2017 and a 3 percent fall from 2016. As this is live programming, Nielsen’s numbers are subject to change as final tallies come in throughout the day, but reduced viewership would fit in with the NFL’s recent trends. Last Thursday night’s NFL season opener between the Philadelphia Eagles and Atlanta Falcons fell 8 percent in the ratings compared to last season’s first game, according to Nielsen data (per The Wrap). But those with sociopolitical agendas in mind would be hard-pressed to blame player protests for both drops, as “severe” weather caused significant delays last week and last night’s SNF had stiff competition. Though Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers returned from an early injury to toss three touchdowns and engineer a spectacular 24-23 comeback against the Bears, SNF going head-to-head with the 2019 Miss America Competition on ABC, Big Brother on CBS and a preview of the new Fox comedy Rel did it no favors. Sunday’s day games fared better than expected. Mostly good ratings news from the Week 1 NFL overnights: Fox regional games up 5% from last season. Fox national game up 1% from last season. CBS single header up 23% from last season. NBC Sunday Night Football down 9% from last season. — John Ourand (@Ourand_SBJ) September 10, 2018 Still, this continues the multiyear trend of depressed viewership for the National Football League. Overall, NFL ratings were down nearly 10 percent across all game times last year compared to the year before. League commissioner Roger Goodell was likely hoping to get 2018 off to a strong start, and while Sunday night’s matchup does represent a 7 percent jump from Thursday’s season opener, not to mention it was the most-watched SNF offering in almost a year, it’s still not as high as years past. NFL broadcasts are still the most reliable sources of chunk audiences on all of television—the average 2017 game was watched by 14.9 million viewers—but viewership has steady declined over the past several years. This is attributable to several factors, the first of which is a small but controversial boycott of players kneeling during the National Anthem, which President Trump has declared as a primary social cause. STAND FOR THE NATIONAL ANTHEM! pic.twitter.com/oHk86YNi0v — The Trump Train 🚂🇺🇸 (@The_Trump_Train) September 9, 2018 Other factors include: game flow and a surplus of commercials; fans instead tuning into NFL RedZone, a channel that airs highlights from all active games; the dilution of the event via Thursday Night Football (which Fox just purchased for more than $3 billion per season); and good old-fashioned audience splintering. The NFL isn’t the only marquee live television event struggling to keep eyeballs. This year’s Oscars hit an all-time low, as did last year’s Emmys, while Golden Globes ratings plunged 21 percent. Even President Trump’s most recent State of the Union address fell 6 percent. In the age of streaming, when we have an abundance of home entertainment, a decline in ratings is not an NFL problem—it’s a TV problem.<doc-sep>Both CBS and Fox posted ratings gains for their NFL Week 1 games, raising hopes that the years long decline in TV viewership may be ending. CBS earned a 10.6 overnight rating on its regional games — a 23 percent increase from Week 1 last year. Its Baltimore Ravens-Buffalo Bills contest was the highest recorded Week 1 game since 2015. On Fox, which aired games at both 1 p.m. and 4:25 p.m., ratings on both games increased. The early Minnesota Vikings-San Francisco 49ers regional games drew an 8.8 rating — up 5 percent from last year. The second game, between the Carolina Panthers and Dallas Cowboys, drew an overnight ratings of 15.7, a 1 percent uptick. The only ratings loser, NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” was the day’s most dramatic contest. The Green Bay Packers overcame a 17-point halftime deficit to beat the Chicago Bears 24-23. The game drew a 14.4 rating — down 9 percent from 2017.<doc-sep>Fans were ready for daytime football: ratings for the afternoon games on CBS and Fox were up from last year. (AP) The traditional NFL time slots saw strong ratings on Sunday’s opening day games, while the primetime matchup saw a slight dip. Early games see big numbers Via SportsMediaWatch, the 1 p.m. ET game on CBS earned an overnight rating of 10.6, meaning 10.6 percent of all televisions in the U.S. were turned to the game (this doesn’t take group viewings, like at sports bars, into account). That’s up 23 percent from last year’s Week 1 game on CBS and up 4 percent from 2016. [NFL live streams: Watch Jets-Lions, Rams-Raiders on Yahoo Sports’ mobile app] Fox, which had regional coverage of San Francisco-Minnesota for the early game, drew an 8.8, which is up 5 percent from last year, but down 19 percent from 2016. Fox’s national 4 p.m. ET game, which featured the Dallas Cowboys at Carolina Panthers shown in 80 percent of markets, had a 15.7 overnight rating. That’s up slightly from 2017. Over the last 14 years, that 15.7 number is middle-of-the-pack, the seventh-most watched late-afternoon game since 2004. ‘Sunday Night Football’ down The primetime game, which saw longtime rivals Chicago and Green Bay play at Lambeau Field, drew a 14.4 for NBC. That’s down 9 percent from last year’s 15.8 for Giants vs. Cowboys, and down a bit from 2016, which saw the Patriots at the Cardinals. Thursday night’s regular-season kickoff, which saw the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles against the Atlanta Falcons, also saw a dip from last year, drawing a 13.4 rating. That game saw a lengthy weather delay because of lightning in Philadelphia and led to a late kickoff. More from Yahoo Sports: • Charles Robinson: Why Dallas might have a big offensive problem • Baldwin, other big NFL stars suffer brutal injuries in Week 1 • Star wasn’t supposed to start, but Browns messed up • NFL winners and losers: Jimmy G. finally takes an ‘L’<doc-sep>The ratings for the National Football League are being watched closely to see if political controversies and boycotts are making a dent against the television behemoth. And the ratings for the first Sunday of the season are in. Thursday night kick-off flounders The opening day kick-off game of the 2018 NFL season did very poorly in the ratings. According to Deadline, the opening game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Atlanta Falcons fell in ratings by 13 percent from the season opener last year. That is also the worst the opening game has done since nearly a decade in 2009. Some pointed to the fact that the game started an hour late as part of the reason for the fall in ratings. Sunday games show an increase Despite the poor showing of the first game, the NFL did much better for the first Sunday of the 2018 season. CBS celebrated their NFL ratings in a statement touting a 23 percent increase in the household/rating share from last year. It also marked the best week one rating in three years. Fox ratings for their NFL games saw a 5 percent increase from last year, but that was down 16 percent from their 2016 ratings. The primetime Chicago Bears and Green Bay game had a ratings drop of 9 percent from last year. "I just find it hard to watch" President Trump had knocked the NFL after the ratings for the first game of the season came out. "Just like the NFL, whose ratings have gone WAY DOWN," he tweeted, "Nike is getting absolutely killed with anger and boycotts. I wonder if they had any idea that it would be this way?" "As far as the NFL is concerned," he added, "I just find it hard to watch, and always will, until they stand for the FLAG!" The president was referring to the public outcry against Nike Inc. for spotlighting Colin Kaepernick in their new advertising campaign. Although the initial response was a drop in stock prices, a recent market analysis said sales increased since the controversial ad. Here's a news video about kneeling protests at Sunday's NFL games:<doc-sep>
President Donald Trump won't find much to criticize in the opening Sunday of NFL action as the first NFL games broadcast on CBS and Fox resulted in ratings gains over Week 1 last year. CBS reported it had the most-watched season opening single-game window since 1998, while Fox — which had the doubleheader Sunday — saw a 1 percent gain for its America's Game of the Week (Dallas Cowboys vs. Carolina Panthers) and 5 percent improvement for its regional coverage. CBS had 17.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen’s. That average audience was 29 percent larger than last year. Trump took to Twitter on Sunday to rip NBC for its Thursday night opener, which saw a 13 percent dip in viewership. He wrote "if the players stood proudly for our Flag and Anthem" ratings would not have slipped. The season-opening Philadelphia Eagles-Atlanta Falcons contest was delayed by weather. NBC's Sunday Night Football contest was the only one of the four broadcast windows that was down. Its broadcast of the Green Bay Packers' 24-23 victory over the Chicago Bears netted a 14.4 overnight rating and 25 share, a nearly 9 percent drop from last year's Sunday Night Football contest (Giants vs. Cowboys). Fox and CBS also reported ratings gains for its pregame shows with CBS's The NFL Today netting its best rating (2.8/7) since 2015. Fox NFL Sunday saw a 9 percent improvement over 2017. The NFL's broadcast audience dipped 10 percent in 2017 and declined 8 percent in 2016, although the NFL remains a force on broadcast TV. Most other programming — including scripted shows — has seen a much bigger decline in recent years amid a shift toward streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.