Linear ratings for the league hit a multiyear bottom in 2017, prompting a rash of speculation about whether pro football’s stranglehold atop the Nielsen charts was coming to an end. But now, as ratings for other programming keep declining, the audience for the NFL is rising.
Through six weeks of the season, NFL games across all its television partners are averaging about 16.3 million viewers, up 3 percent from last season’s average of 15.8 million. Since hitting a low for this decade of 15 million viewers in 2017, viewership has climbed 9 percent and is on par with the 2016 season (16.5 million).
What happened? Explanations for the rebound range from more exciting play on the field — scoring and other offensive metrics have boomed in the past season-plus — to the presence of high-profile young quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs and Baker Mayfield of the Cleveland Browns to the NFL no longer being the culture-war battleground that it became in 2016 and 2017 thanks to Colin Kaepernick.
Source: Porter, R. (2019, October 17). What’s Behind the NFL’s TV Ratings Comeback? The Hollywood Reporter.
‘Stranger Things 3’ Sets Netflix Viewing Record for Series
Season three of Stranger Things is Netflix’s most-watched original series ever, the streaming giant said Wednesday in its quarterly earnings report.
The 1980s-set sci-fi drama racked up more than 64 million views in the four weeks after its July 4 premiere, Netflix claims, far surpassing the numbers of any of the (relative handful of) shows for which the streamer has released similar figures in past earnings reports.
Since Netflix started highlighting select worldwide view numbers in its fourth-quarter 2018 earnings, the previous high for a series was 45 million over four weeks for The Umbrella Academy.
Source: Porter, R. (2019, October 16). ‘Stranger Things 3’ Sets Netflix Viewing Record for Series. The Hollywood Reporter.
Editor’s Note: Two short articles from the Hollywood Reporter.