(12-17-2018 10:48 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings/

Going through and looking at the tv ratings for our games this season, it's painfully obvious that giving up everything just for a weeknight cable slot is doing more harm to our schools than good.

The highest rated all-sunbelt match up this season was of course the conference championship game with almost 900k tuned in. It was in an excellent time slot right after college gameday (although gameday had 1.9M viewers which means as soon as it ended, a million people changed the channel).

Arkansas State @ Alabama garnered 1.6M
Georgia State @ Memphis garnered 790k
Georgia Southern @ Clemson garnered 554k
Boise State @ Troy garnered 241k
There was no data for other out of conference match ups.

After that, the next highest rated game was when a ranked App State came to Statesboro on a Thursday night. It had a viewership of 105k and was actually the lowest rated game that week.

The rest of the matchups this season, GAST/ArkSt, GS/TXST, and GAST/Troy, didn't garner enough viewers to be recorded which means viewership was sub-100k. There was no data for Troy/SouthAL on ESPN2.

Meanwhile, our schools are sacrificing so much just to be on tv on a weeknight. It's hurting our season ticket sales, fan interest during the season, student athletes, and our budgets, and the whole point is to showcase our universities on national tv, but no one is going to watch two teams they don't know play a game in a mostly empty stadium.

The alternative is having our Saturday games back but only available on ESPN+. Which scenario would be more detrimental to your program?

(12-17-2018 11:27 AM)CardinalBlackTrojan Wrote:  

(12-17-2018 10:48 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings/

Going through and looking at the tv ratings for our games this season, it's painfully obvious that giving up everything just for a weeknight cable slot is doing more harm to our schools than good.

The highest rated all-sunbelt match up this season was of course the conference championship game with almost 900k tuned in. It was in an excellent time slot right after college gameday (although gameday had 1.9M viewers which means as soon as it ended, a million people changed the channel).

Arkansas State @ Alabama garnered 1.6M
Georgia State @ Memphis garnered 790k
Georgia Southern @ Clemson garnered 554k
Boise State @ Troy garnered 241k
There was no data for other out of conference match ups.

After that, the next highest rated game was when a ranked App State came to Statesboro on a Thursday night. It had a viewership of 105k and was actually the lowest rated game that week.

The rest of the matchups this season, GAST/ArkSt, GS/TXST, and GAST/Troy, didn't garner enough viewers to be recorded which means viewership was sub-100k. There was no data for Troy/SouthAL on ESPN2.

Meanwhile, our schools are sacrificing so much just to be on tv on a weeknight. It's hurting our season ticket sales, fan interest during the season, student athletes, and our budgets, and the whole point is to showcase our universities on national tv, but no one is going to watch two teams they don't know play a game in a mostly empty stadium.

The alternative is having our Saturday games back but only available on ESPN+. Which scenario would be more detrimental to your program?

I disagree. The schools have agreed to do this because they obviously see the worth of the national exposure. I don't know why one midweek home game on ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU would hurt season ticket sales? None of our schools had to play more than one midweek national TV game.

If we had a MAC model and were playing multiple home games on weekdays, then I'd totally agree. But most of our games are being played on Saturdays on ESPN+.

And if someone is fickle enough to not buy season tix for 6 home games, all because one game is on a Tuesday, then that's kind of pathetic...

Also, I think ESPN does a decent job half of the time choosing games that will have good attendance... The App State@Georgia Southern game looked fantastic and sounded great on TV. So did the Troy @ USA game, which had 26,000 in attendance. Even the previous Troy/USA games on ESPN had great attendance (2017 had 25,211, 2016 had 30,837).

(12-17-2018 12:31 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  There isn't a school in this conference that loses more in revenue from the weeknight games than what we're getting from the TV contract now.

From a purely selfish standpoint I hate the weekday games, but they are better for both the bottom line and for getting more eyeballs on our teams (no one is going to watch our games on ESPN+ except for people that already have a significant interest in our teams).

(12-17-2018 01:09 PM)kb325 Wrote:  I'm just tired of having to give up the premier home game of the season...every year. There's a lot to say for growing your fan base...and you don't do that with mid-week games...even though appy handed us our buts with our mid-week home game...EVERYONE would have loved for that to be a Saturday game...and the place would have been packed...that's fun...that grows the fan base...a larger fan base leads to increased donations. We get paid peanuts for those mid-week games. Exposure is nice and it keeps you up with the Jones's...but screw mid-week games...my $.02

(12-17-2018 01:01 PM)southcharlotteapp Wrote:  I don't mind Thursday. We had our first Tuesday and it was awful.

I do wish App v GS was alway on Saturday.

(12-17-2018 01:34 PM)Klak Wrote:  Conference mid-week games:



GS is the only team in conference to play a midweek home game every year.

(12-17-2018 10:48 AM)TrueBlueDrew Wrote:  http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings/

Going through and looking at the tv ratings for our games this season, it's painfully obvious that giving up everything just for a weeknight cable slot is doing more harm to our schools than good.

The highest rated all-sunbelt match up this season was of course the conference championship game with almost 900k tuned in. It was in an excellent time slot right after college gameday (although gameday had 1.9M viewers which means as soon as it ended, a million people changed the channel).

Arkansas State @ Alabama garnered 1.6M
Georgia State @ Memphis garnered 790k
Georgia Southern @ Clemson garnered 554k
Boise State @ Troy garnered 241k
There was no data for other out of conference match ups.

After that, the next highest rated game was when a ranked App State came to Statesboro on a Thursday night. It had a viewership of 105k and was actually the lowest rated game that week.

The rest of the matchups this season, GAST/ArkSt, GS/TXST, and GAST/Troy, didn't garner enough viewers to be recorded which means viewership was sub-100k. There was no data for Troy/SouthAL on ESPN2.

Meanwhile, our schools are sacrificing so much just to be on tv on a weeknight. It's hurting our season ticket sales, fan interest during the season, student athletes, and our budgets, and the whole point is to showcase our universities on national tv, but no one is going to watch two teams they don't know play a game in a mostly empty stadium.

The alternative is having our Saturday games back but only available on ESPN+. Which scenario would be more detrimental to your program?

(12-17-2018 01:34 PM)Klak Wrote:  Conference mid-week games:



GS is the only team in conference to play a midweek home game every year.

(12-17-2018 01:52 PM)debragga Wrote:  Somehow ULM has escaped playing weeknight conference games. We haven’t played one since 2015 (@ Texas State) and haven’t had one at home since 2013 (vs WKU, with one @ Troy the same season)

(12-17-2018 02:03 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  Weeknight games are not worth it. Play another buy game for the money against a P5 opponent - which will probably be on TV. Then play on Saturdays. The only difference is "exposure" from the weeknight games but I'm still waiting to see some concrete evidence that it helps in recruiting or anything else.