President Donald Trump's call for TV viewers to boycott NFL game telecasts appears to have backfired. Total ratings for Week 3 games increased 3 percent from the same period last season.
The bump occurred after Trump said Friday at a rally in Alabama that NFL team owners should fire players who protest racial inequality during the national anthem. Trump used the phrase "son of a bitch" to describe such players. Some game windows posted double-digit ratings increases, and NFL Network's pregame show grabbed its biggest TV audience ever.
Of course, this was just one one week in a long season, and overall NFL ratings did drop 8 percent last year. The U.S. presidential election, lousy games and the backlash from Colin Kaepernick's protests are cited as reasons for the decline.
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Two sets of fans are claiming to boycott the league: the #BoycottNFL crowd, which is enraged the league allowed Kaepernick's on-field protest for racial justice last season, and the #NoKaepernickNoNFL fans, who vow not to watch another game until the ex-49ers quarterback lands a job.
Still, it was the NFL's turn to crow Tuesday after publicly sparring with the president over comments such as this:
League spokesman Brian McCarthy tweeted this about the ratings:
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Details behind one of the most surreal weekends in NFL history:
— ESPN said its telecast of the Cowboys' 28-17 win over the Cardinals on Monday night drew a 9.3 rating, a 63 percent increase from Falcons-Saints in 2016. The network has benefited from a much stronger "Monday Night Football" schedule this season than in years past. (Ed. note: Also noteworthy: That Falcons-Saints game aired on the same night as the first presidential debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton.)
— CBS's late-afternoon window, featuring the Packers' 27-24 overtime victory over the Bengals and the Chiefs-Chargers game, was the highest-rated NFL game on any network in Week 3 with an average overnight metered-market household rating/share of 13.8/27. Those figures were down 1 percent from last year’s 13.9/26 in Week 3.
— CBS's "The NFL Today" scored a 3.2 rating, a 33 percent boost from Week 3 last season and the show's best number since 2010.
— NFL Network's "GameDay Morning" posted the most watched-episode in the show's 10-year history, averaging 927,000 viewers. That was huge for the cable show, which has to battle against established broadcast competitors such as "Fox NFL Sunday" and "The NFL Today."
— Fox's "NFL Kickoff" averaged 1.625 million viewers, a 39 percent increase from last year, network spokesman Eddie Motl told Sporting News. The show also beat ESPN's "NFL Countdown" in the 11 a.m.-to-noon ET period by 12 percent, Motl said. The "Fox NFL Sunday" pregame show was up 1 percent from Week 3 last year.
— The news was not all good for NFL TV partners. Ratings for NBC's "Sunday Night Football" telecast of the Redskins' win over the Raiders declined 10 percent from last season. Fox's early singleheader window led by Giants-Eagles averaged a 9.2 rating, a 19 percent drop from last year's rating for the same weekend, Motl said.
This article has been updated with ratings figures from Fox and new CBS figures.