Nothing to do with sports or TV (well, sort of). You should probably move along.

I bet you can't guess what reference I'd have gone with if I'd gone with the comic from a week ago mentioned in the main text.(From Camp Weedonwantcha. Click for full-sized cat-stravaganza.)

The big story in webcomics in 2013 was Strip Search, Penny Arcade‘s online webcomic reality show where twelve aspiring webcomickers competed to spend a year under the tutelage of the most popular webcomickers out there. Both Fleen and Webcomic Overlook did reviews of at least some episodes of the show, and it was apparent to me that, while anyone could conceivably start any webcomic at any time without needing any help from anyone else, the winner’s comic (to say nothing of whatever some of the losers did, since these reality shows never give a boost to just the winner) would start right out of the gate with a built-in audience bigger than what a lot of webcomickers could ever dream of before Gabe or Tycho did a thing on their behalf outside the show – not to mention that the choice of winner would say a lot about what Gabe and Tycho wanted from a successful webcomic under their banner, especially important given the major issues I had with the Kickstarter that, among other things, gave birth to Strip Search in the first place.

So what sort of comic would Gabe and Tycho put under their banner for a year (or more)? That would be Katie Rice and her tale of kids fending for themselves in the wilderness, Camp Weedonwantcha.

Right off the bat, let me say a few things about the art. Rice has an animation background, and it shows; her characters have a rubbery quality about them, with big heads perched upon really thin, tiny bodies. This wouldn’t be out of place as a show on Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network, which is a useful way to look at the comic as a whole.

Camp Weedonwantcha is, in short, a camp populated entirely by kids, with no adults whatsoever. The conceit isn’t treated in a Lord of the Flies-type way, as the kids spend most of their time simply having fun, but there are still some hints of the nature of the place that make it apparent things are Not What They Seem. Supplies (for certain definitions of “supplies”) mysteriously fall from the sky seemingly at random, there are hidden nooks and crannies containing various secrets, the kids may or may not be surrounded by feral kids and supernatural forces, and even some of the kids we actually know have Something Wrong with them (and probably most of the kids at camp are either just plain weird or being slowly driven crazy). The lead character, Malachi, laments in an early strip that he won’t get to see the end of Game of Thrones, implying he’s stuck at the camp indefinitely, possibly for the rest of his life, and the name of the camp itself suggests that the kids have been dumped there by their parents who just want to get rid of them (as does the “origin” of Malachi’s friend Seventeen). There are enough hints out there to come up with more wacky theories than Lost (such as “the camp is really purgatory”).

El Santo seemed to think these elements are merely background elements that simply add a touch of surreality to the gags; I couldn’t help but see them as Rice laying the groundwork for later Cerebus Syndrome and allowing the comic to lapse into outright horror, or at least a decidedly adult story. But it’s been over a year, and while the early continuing stories dropped some tantalizing hints about the nature of the place, those hints seem to have mostly disappeared. At the very least, if it’s setting up Cerebus Syndrome, it’s doing so very slowly. Or at least, I thought so… until I realized after last Tuesday’s comic that the creepy kid Malachi’s been trying to get to “help” him find cats appears to, in fact, be Proto Kid, the legendary first camper that supposedly went feral long ago, suggesting this story arc may well be the exact moment the comic fully takes the plunge into Cerebus Syndrome (even if he seems to have shaken him off in this strip).

Incidentially, the very first continuing story arc? Was basically an excuse for toilet humor. Yeah, I didn’t exactly have the best impression of the comic early on.

To be honest, while I’m not sure I could handle the comic if it went into Cerebus Syndrome, I’m not particularly fond of it as it is. It shifts between a few batches of gag-a-day comics and continuing storylines, but the gag-a-day comics just aren’t funny, instead just sort of being… there, just little drops of surreality that pop up and fall flat. I get the sense the story arcs are where Rice’s true passion lies where it comes to the strip, and considering Gabe and Tycho’s disdain for “dreaded continuity”, I can’t help but wonder if part of the reason she waited this long to get here, and possibly even part of the reason she included the gag-a-day comics at all, was to mislead them about the nature of the strip to boost her chances of winning. (Disclaimer: I say this not having actually watched the Strip Search finale.)

In any case, the arcs are short enough that the comic doesn’t suffer from the problems I’ve had with other continuity-heavy strips that only update twice a week, but that might be the best I can say about it. I’m unimpressed with the gag strips and dreaded reading it when it was in an arc. It’s hard to call Camp Weedonwantcha a bad comic – there’s a certain charm to it that might make it appealing if you’re into the kind of thing it’s going for, and its mix of humor and drama is such that I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a substantial crossover between fans of The Order of the Stick and people who would be fans of this comic, if they’re willing to accept things being more on the drama side of the ledger. But I’ve actually started to let OOTS fall off a bit, partly because the start of Book Six has had a very heavy focus on the state of and battle within vampire Durkon, with the promise of more to come. To have a comic with even more of an emphasis on drama (though who knows given how much further into Cerebus Syndrome OOTS is going), one where the quality of the humor is nowhere near as good as OOTS? That’s something that I can’t endorse.

2013-14 NBA Ratings Roundup, Part II: NBATV Regular Season Games

Continuing from this post, here are ratings for every game on NBATV last season. In part because we’re so far removed from it, I didn’t bother trying to find out what games were on in each spot, except for the top few games so that you know that the only games with over 700,000 viewers involved the Heat when they still had LeBron James.

All numbers from Son of the Bronx. 18-49 ratings, when available, from TVbytheNumbers or The Futon Critic.

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How should I report sports TV ratings going forward?

It’s been hard for me to get my mind off of the Sports TV Ratings site since I discovered it last week. Since I raised my concerns about it potentially being shut down by Nielsen, I’ve found out that the site appears to be run by none other than Robert Seidman, co-founder of the TV by the Numbers site, who presumably either has the credentials to avoid being shut down or at least knows how to stay on Nielsen’s good side. But if the site is in it for the long haul, it’s so ridiculously comprehensive that it could completely shake up how I track sports ratings – and affect the necessity for me to do so.

I’ve generally tweeted whatever I’ve found from TVBTN or TV Media Insights (and the Futon Critic before it) each day, and TVMI reported so many more sports numbers than the Futon Critic I ended up putting up a post recapping the weekend, which for the moment got integrated with the Sports Ratings Highlights, but this site blows that system out of the water by giving me access to every single sports event on an English-language all-sports network, pretty close to as soon as the numbers are available. At the very least, if I still wanted to put up daily ratings I’d be putting up blog posts every single day, and that’s not even getting into the possibility of bringing back the Studio Show Scorecard and bringing it to the point I’ve always had in mind for it. But if I were to do that, I’d be leaning so heavily on STVR I can’t help but wonder if my posts would be redundant with its posts. Reorganizing SotB data into a more viewer-friendly format for the first version of the Studio Show Scorecard is one thing, but this would basically be taking STVR posts, one at a time, and shuffling the data around into a new format that might not be much of an improvement over what it already has. Still, just for myself it may be the best way to compile each day’s sports ratings for my own database.

Although doing a full-fledged SSS may not be all that useful in any case. At the bottom of each daily STVR post is a disclaimer that audiences under 100K or so are considered by Nielsen to be a “scratch”, meaning the audience is too small to be all that statistically significant. Considering how widespread audiences of all sizes seem to be reported these days I’m not sure that isn’t Seidman extrapolating from his experiences several years ago, when CNBC would scratch all the time on TVBTN’s own cable news scorecards, to today when Nielsen may or may not still be scratching small audiences, but it makes sense. There are only around 50,000 Nielsen panelists, and each panelist represents around 5,800 people, so a) audiences below 6,000 or so are really just measuring the random fluctuations of people that happen to be dropping in with no more than one or two panelists actually purposely watching the show, and b) in general the thousands place is determined more by those fluctuations than by how many panelists are actually watching, since each panelist that does or does not sit through the whole thing makes a 5-6 thousand person swing in the measured audience, which explains why Sports Media Watch never brings up the thousands place unless I needle him (according to the laws of statistics, the absolute number actually gets less accurate as the audience gets bigger, but slowly).

It’s still somewhat useful as a tiebreaker on the big listings, but until you get to around 22,000 or so there isn’t better than a 95% chance that the three or four panelists watching aren’t the only ones in the entire country watching; a show with an audience of about 5,000 could easily have several times that number and is being measured for less solely through the luck of the Nielsen panelist draw, or conversely an even smaller audience. All that is to set up that the only networks that can consistently attract audiences over 100,000 for their studio shows, or anything other than live sports events, are ESPN, ESPN2, and maybe NFL Network, which is bad news for FS1 and NBCSN, the two networks with the most high-profile studio shows outside the ESPNs but which fall behind multiple sport-specific networks as a matter of course, for whatever those numbers are worth. If I want to report only shows for whom the numbers are actually statistically significant, maybe I should stick to those live sports events, at least for the moment until non-ESPN studio shows can attract a significant audience. (And Douglas Pucci on Awful Announcing may be on to something by just listing weekly averages for studio shows that didn’t crack their networks’ top ten, even if it’s mostly a means to avoid getting shut down by Nielsen again; averages across multiple episodes should be more accurate than just one.)

I have a new Da Blog Poll up to figure out what I should do going forward, which I’m going to run through the end of next week in hopes of catching people coming back from holiday break, but no matter what the utility of every other site I use as a source could be impacted just by bringing STVR into the fold. TV Media Insights is mostly useful for ratings for broadcast networks and the occasional household rating and ratings for Spanish-language networks and other networks not covered by STVR; this last category cuts further enough into TVBTN’s usefulness that it pretty much only becomes useful for daytime events on non-STVR networks. Pucci’s Awful Announcing posts would be useful for household ratings and that’s it, maybe the occasional event on a non-STVR network. Even the weekly averages would only be useful for the yearly comparisons… and even then at some point I could conceivably make those comparisons myself. For that matter, I’m not sure AA would have much use for him once they discovered STVR. The only sources that wouldn’t be appreciably affected would be SportsBusiness Daily and Sports Media Watch for their daytime broadcast ratings, and even though my issues with CBS seem to have been alleviated as the year has gone along, SBD’s continued tendency to drop their posts after holiday-related delays or when Friday is a holiday makes clear that broadcast daytime ratings really are the weak spot when it comes to the reporting of sports ratings, more than ever before.

2013-14 NBA Ratings Roundup, Part I: ABC, ESPN, and TNT Games

With Christmas just behind us, here’s last season’s NBA regular season ratings on ABC, ESPN, and TNT, to kick off what will hopefully be a series of ratings roundups, not just confined to the NBA. This is mostly a copy of this list. As only one NBATV game beat any games on any of these networks, those games will be in a separate chart.

Household ratings from Son of the Bronx for ESPN games and SportsBusiness Daily for ABC games and those TNT games where it is available. 18-49 ratings, when available, from TVbytheNumbers and The Futon Critic.

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A slightly belated blog-day.

A year ago, I said that Year Eight would have to be a big year for the future of Da Blog, and to some degree that happened. It certainly wasn’t the wasted year the previous year was; I wrote a lot more of what might be called “classic” posts, for lack of a better term, and got set up for the future when I moved to LA to be with my Dad.

But despite that, and much to my own surprise, this is only the 94th post since my last blog-day post, meaning in terms of number of posts, Year Eight on Da Blog was about on par with Year Seven. This despite ditching the Studio Show Scorecard posts and writing a bunch of posts about the future of television and video in general. Part of that has to do with the continued atrophying of webcomics posts (which I think I’m just about ready to abandon entirely, though I should have a review up by the end of the week), part of it has to do with me falling way behind on ratings for much of the year and only putting up a few weekly ratings posts in October and November. There also were long stretches without any posts for parts of the year.

Overall, however, I think this year was a lot bigger in terms of quality of content than last year. More of my posts this year made important points about television and the Internet, including the Nexus of Television and Sports in Transition series; the lack of webcomic and ratings posts meant there were fewer posts that were purely ephemeral, and more posts that had more thought put into it. It was a big year for net neutrality and cord-cutting, and while I can’t say I did a lot of reporting on it per se, I certainly think I introduced a new perspective on it, or at least would have if I had any audience whatsoever outside the Flex Schedule Watch posts. I had very few posts in 2014 that didn’t have something to do with TV in some way, and even fewer that didn’t have something to do with sports or TV. I may also be emphasizing Twitter more as a place to put interesting things, even if only for my own reference.

Next year may or may not see an increase in posting frequency. Right now I’m working on a book about the sports TV wars (a book I always thought should exist but never trusted myself to be the one to write it), partly an expansion of the Nexus of Television and Sports in Transition series, that could take up a lot of my time in the first four months or so of the new year. The hope is that this will provide a solid financial foundation and finally attract more people to the stuff I spew out here; even if that’s a pie-in-the-sky dream, at least it’d serve as an expansion of my #brand. I may try to get a lot of that written this coming week when I head back to Seattle for Christmas (as it turns out, I’m not writing this post from there because I’m not flying there until Christmas Eve and not coming back until New Year’s Eve); circumstances beyond our control have made the past few months less productive than I would have liked and put us in an apartment with no real escape from Dad’s cat, whose every lick and scratch is more than enough distraction for me. Dad and I have also talked about potentially trying to get stuff published in other venues, so look for that as well. What I do post here will probably be more of the same as in 2014: trying to convince people that broadcast television does have a role, however circumscribed, in the video landscape of the future if it’s willing to embrace it and doesn’t sacrifice itself at the altar of retransmission consent revenue, coupled with as much coverage of sports ratings as my sources will allow (to which I may be adding a new one to the list).

I may have said that Year Eight would be a big year for the future of Da Blog, but Year Nine looks to be the real deal. There are concrete plans in place, and this looks to be the year that sets the tone for the rest of Da Blog if not the rest of my life.

Sports TV Scorecard for Friday, December 19

I’m going to say right now that I fully expect SportsTVRatings.com to be shut down or at least be forced to scale back by Nielsen at some point. The About page says that “if you’ve seen this much daily cable sports data posted elsewhere, let us know where – we’ll read that and find another hobby!” Well, there used to be a site nearly as comprehensive as what they have, even though it posted on a weekly and not daily basis – remind me to tell you the story of Son of the Bronx at some point. What may help this site last longer is that it isn’t on a blog-hosting service like Blogger and isn’t giving away their real names, so it might be more difficult for Nielsen to contact them and have much force behind it, but possibly not much so considering they have a link to their e-mail.

This site has viewership (and usually 18-49 data) for every single show on an English-language cable sports network, including beIN Sports which SotB has never covered to the same extent as the others (although it appears to be nearly as devoid of viewers as Fox Sports 2, though its peaks are significantly higher than what FS2 could dream of). It also has the weekly primetime and total day summary numbers for each network, without weekly or yearly comparisons but with 18-49 numbers. Because the data is daily and not weekly, using it to calculate median minute ratings and integrating its 18-49 numbers with SotB/Awful Announcing’s household ratings would be a major pain, and the former problem is exacerbated by Excel not recognizing their tables when creating a web-based data query, and taking forever to select the whole table in IE10 Metro mode.

What I can do is present a proof-of-concept of an idea I had when I first discovered how comprehensive SotB was being, daily scorecards for studio shows and sports events throughout the day similar to what TVNewser does for news networks. This would be even more time-consuming than the Studio Show Scorecards were when I was doing them a year ago, and there are other reasons for me not to want to do this on a regular basis, but I present it as an idea for how the site might be able to avoid the fate of so many sites to face the wrath of Nielsen – even if all it would withhold from publishing are the time periods from noon-3 PM and 3 AM-6 AM ET. Events in bold are live sporting events.

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Sports Ratings Report for Weeks of November 17-30

Primetime – Nov 17-23
Vwrs
(000)

Change

Lst Wk Lst Yr

=

=

3538

+16%

+11%

#2

=

=

1137

-4%

+3%

#3

=

=

465

-44%

-34%

#4

=

+2

351

+65%

+158%

#5

+1

-1

223

+46%

-3%

#6

-1

-1

160

-9%

+8%

#7

=

=

87

-1%

-5%

#8

=

+1

79

+10%

-4%

#9

=

-1

67

+16%

-26%

#10

=

=

45

-8%

-13%

Total Day – Nov 17-23
Vwrs
(000)

Change

Lst Wk Lst Yr

=

=

1192

-3%

-0%

#2

+1

+1

317

+1%

+10%

#3

-1

-1

301

-19%

-11%

#4

=

=

128

-20%

-28%

#5

=

+1

123

+31%

+64%

#6

+1

-1

97

+37%

-12%

#7

-1

+1

73

-13%

+26%

#8

=

-1

62

+5%

-3%

#9

=

-1

58

+12%

0%

#10

=

=

28

-13%

-7%

There’s a very real possibility I may not need SotB’s Awful Announcing posts (which at this point, include everything I already have except for the rankings) to do the weekly network summaries anymore. TVNewser’s “Cable News Ranker” posts include a document with week-by-week, month-by-month, quarter-by-quarter, and (presumably) year-by-year reports of average audience, average number of households watching, and household “coverage” percentage (a number that presumably reflects the audience estimates that have hardly been reported at all all year)… for (almost) every single Nielsen-rated cable network, as well as each network’s rank compared to the others. To see Nielsen include so many numbers I had thought I was the only one interested in, as well as a number I didn’t even dare to think of but is incredibly useful to put the others in context, that can potentially allow me to include networks SotB doesn’t report information for for whatever reason, blew me away. This may be the most felicitous development since I learned about how comprehensive SotB was being on his blog.

Or, it would be… but there’s a problem. No matter what, TVNewser does only one of these posts a week. So every month It puts up the rankings for the entire month just past but skips a week. Okay, I can just use TVNewser for monthly wrapups, but every three months it puts up the quarterly rankings for the three months just past, and skips that month. I’d bet anything that at year’s end it’ll put up the yearly rankings and skip the fourth quarter, but I don’t think these posts even go back that far, which actually surprises me because I’m pretty damn sure I’ve seen the sort of image that leads the post before, even if it didn’t have this comprehensive document. So it’s vaguely useful for a year-end rating roundup, but that’s it, and no matter what I use it for I can’t do the year-on-year comparisons I’m used to for the near future. (I guess I can accept that it would get pretty crowded if at the end of the year you had the rankings for the last week, and for December, and for the fourth quarter, and for the entire year…)

So this is more of a proof of concept than anything else, taking the November ratings, one of the four all year where I can take the month’s ratings and do a comparison to the previous month. Because I still can’t do the median minute ratings without SotB’s comprehensive information, I would probably still split primetime and total day into two tables given the sheer magnitude of information involved. I’m also assuming “ENN” is short for ESPNEWS, but it’s entirely possible it’s just not on the list; Fox Deportes is the only Spanish-language sports network on the list, and not only have I seen plenty of ratings reported for Univision Deportes and ESPN Deportes (and seen UDN on both the TVMI and TVbytheNumbers lists), I’ve actually seen UDN advertise its weekly summary data of this sort, so clearly not all Nielsen-rated networks are on the list (the disclaimer says it “includes only those cable networks who [sic] supply program names to the industry”, whatever that means – for what it’s worth HBO, which often tops the daily lists with shows like Game of Thrones and True Blood, doesn’t show up either, and neither does FXX, but FXM does).

Regardless, the lack of Spanish-language networks means I’m limiting this list to the same bank of networks I always use. Overall rankings are out of 96 networks for primetime and 98 for total day; note that Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network are each considered to be two networks for Nielsen purposes for their nighttime adult-oriented Nick@Nite and Adult Swim blocks respectively, and only the latter appear in the primetime ranks. Yes, that means MLBN is very near the bottom in both measures. It could be worse; Fox Sports 2 outpaces only Tr3s, MTV’s Hispanic-oriented network, and the dying corpse of G4. (MLBN and FS2 have VH1 Classic, mun2, and Al Jazeera America between them in some order in both measures.)

PT Ovr Rank
Vwr (000)
LM
Chng
HH
(Cvr)
LM
Chng
TD Ovr Rank
Vwr (000)
LM
Chng
HH
(Cvr)
LM
Chng

1

=

2.4

+19%

1

=

0.9

+12%

=

3881

+21%

2.9

+0.4

=

1376

+14%

1.1

+0.1

2

#13

+13

0.6

+76%

2

#28

+1

0.2

+4%

+1

949

+82%

1.0

+0.5

+1

316

+3%

0.3

=

3

#30

-2

0.3

+7%

3

#38

+10

0.2

+26%

+1

540

+4%

0.4

=

+1

274

+32%

0.3

+0.1

4

#50

-41

0.2

-76%

4

#61

-34

0.1

-63%

-2

276

-76%

0.2

-0.7

-2

124

-63%

0.1

-0.2

5

#64

+15

0.1

+49%

5

#70

+13

0.1

+45%

+2

163

+55%

0.2

+0.1

+5

81

+59%

0.1

=

6

#71

-5

0.1

-4%

6

#72

=

0.1

+3%

-1

132

-10%

0.1

=

=

79

+1%

0.1

=

7

#72

-3

0.1

-3%

7

#74

-10

0.1

+2%

-1

132

+2%

0.1

=

-2

76

unch

0.1

=

8

#79

+4

0.1

+33%

8

#80

=

0.0

+4%

+1

85

+8%

0.1

=

+1

59

+5%

0.1

=

9

#83

+4

0.0

+10%

9

#82

-3

0.0

-4%

+1

69

+15%

0.1

=

-1

55

-5%

0.1

=

10

#90

-8

0.0

-43%

10

#92

-14

0.0

-50%

-2

44

-45%

0.1

=

-3

28

-53%

0.0

-0.1

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Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 15

NBC’s Sunday Night Football package gives it flexible scheduling. For the last seven weeks of the season, the games are determined on 12-day notice, 6-day notice for Week 17.

The first year, no game was listed in the Sunday Night slot, only a notation that one game could move there. Now, NBC lists the game it “tentatively” schedules for each night. However, the NFL is in charge of moving games to prime time.

Here are the rules from the NFL web site (note that even with the bit about the early flexes, this was written with the 2007 season in mind, hence why it still says late games start at 4:15 ET instead of 4:25):

  • Begins Sunday of Week 5
  • In effect during Weeks 5-17
  • Up to 2 games may be flexed into Sunday Night between Weeks 5-10
  • Only Sunday afternoon games are subject to being moved into the Sunday night window.
  • The game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night during flex weeks will be listed at 8:15 p.m. ET.
  • The majority of games on Sundays will be listed at 1:00 p.m. ET during flex weeks except for games played in Pacific or Mountain Time zones which will be listed at 4:05 or 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • No impact on Thursday, Saturday or Monday night games.
  • The NFL will decide (after consultation with CBS, FOX, NBC) and announce as early as possible the game being played at 8:15 p.m. ET. The announcement will come no later than 12 days prior to the game. The NFL may also announce games moving to 4:05 p.m. ET and 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • Week 17 start time changes could be decided on 6 days notice to ensure a game with playoff implications.
  • The NBC Sunday night time slot in “flex” weeks will list the game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night.
  • Fans and ticket holders must be aware that NFL games in flex weeks are subject to change 12 days in advance (6 days in Week 17) and should plan accordingly.
  • NFL schedules all games.
  • Teams will be informed as soon as they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.
  • Rules NOT listed on NFL web site but pertinent to flex schedule selection: CBS and Fox each protect games in five out of six weeks starting Week 11, and cannot protect any games Week 17. Games were protected after Week 4 in 2006 and 2011, because NBC hosted Christmas night games those years and all the other games were moved to Saturday (and so couldn’t be flexed), but are otherwise protected after Week 5. As I understand it, during the Week 5-10 period the NFL and NBC declare their intention to flex out a game two weeks in advance, at which point CBS and Fox pick one game each to protect.
  • In the past, three teams could appear a maximum of six games in primetime on NBC, ESPN or NFL Network (everyone else gets five) and no team may appear more than four times on NBC. I don’t know how the expansion of the Thursday Night schedule affects this, if it does. No team starts the season completely tapped out at any measure; ten teams have five primetime appearances each, but only the Packers, Bears, 49ers, Steelers, and Saints don’t have games in the main flex period, and all have games in the early flex period. I don’t know if both of the games scheduled for 12/20 count towards the total, or only the one in primetime. A list of all teams’ number of appearances is in my Week 5 post.

Here are the current tentatively-scheduled games and my predictions:

Week 17 (December 28):

AFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS
WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS (7-7)
NORTH
49-4-1
59-5
2 tied at 9-5
SOUTH
310-4
69-5
CLINCHED
WEST
211-3
8-6
CLINCHED 8-6
EAST
111-3
8-6
CLINCHED
NFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS
WILD CARD WAITING IN THE
NFC SOUTH WINGS
SOUTH
46-8
510-4 5-9
5-8-1
EAST
310-4
610-4
9-5
NORTH
210-4
9-5
10-4
WEST
111-3
10-4
  • Tentative game: None (NBC will show game with guaranteed playoff implications).
  • Possible games: Panthers-Falcons, Lions-Packers, Chargers-Chiefs, Bills-Patriots, Bengals-Steelers (with the first three being most likely). Sadly for any chance of seeing Johnny Manziel in primetime this season, on top of his bad play the Browns’ conference record is atrocious, especially compared to the Chiefs and Chargers, essentially eliminating Browns-Ravens as a guaranteed win-and-you’re-in game for the Browns, though there’s an off chance it’s a loser-out game for the Ravens.
  • Lions-Packers will be selected if: The Packers win OR the Lions and Cowboys lose. If the Lions were to win and the Packers lose the Lions would cinch the conference tiebreaker; both teams hold tiebreakers over Philly so there is pretty much no way for this to be a loser-out game, but either team, with a win, would cinch a first-round bye contingent on winning the division. Even if a first-round bye isn’t guaranteed to be on the line, however, this game would probably still be flexed in with a Lions loss and a Cowboys win if any of the other scenarios fail to play out.
  • Panthers-Falcons will be picked if: The Panthers win AND the Falcons beat the Saints AND the Lions-Packers scenario doesn’t happen. The Saints winning on Monday night and the Falcons losing Sunday actually isn’t a disaster for this game’s chances; the Falcons would tie the Saints in the standings and hold a head-to-head sweep with a win, but the Panthers do need to hold up their end of the bargain, as a loss would leave them dependent on what the Saints do against the Bucs. Both the NFL and NBC really hope this doesn’t happen.
  • Chargers-Chiefs will be picked if: The Chiefs beat the Steelers AND the Chargers win AND the Ravens win AND the Lions-Packers scenario doesn’t happen. Though neither team is in position right now, their respective conference records have them in such good shape for cross-division tiebreakers it could actually hurt this game’s chances for the loser to be out; if the Steelers and Ravens both lose out, the Chiefs would still hold a head-to-head tiebreaker over the Steelers, and the Bills’ conference record is even worse than that of the Browns so they would be a nonfactor in this scenario.
  • Bengals-Steelers will be picked if: The Bengals lose AND the Chiefs beat the Steelers AND the Chargers win AND (the Ravens win AND the Lions-Packers scenario doesn’t happen) OR (the Lions win AND the Packers lose AND the Panthers-Falcons scenario doesn’t happen). If the Ravens lose either week, this game is for the division with the loser falling behind the Chiefs-Chargers winner, but if the Steelers lose out, they could easily still make the playoffs if the Ravens also lose out and the Chiefs beat the Chargers, and a Browns win this week doesn’t help that because they split the season series with the Steelers (with both also splitting with the Ravens), would finish with the same division record (ahead of the Ravens), and lose the common games tiebreaker. For the Bengals, the problem is all the more acute because tiebreakers don’t factor into it at all; in the wild card race, they can only fall behind the Chiefs, Chargers, or Bills if those teams win out, or the Ravens if they pick up at least one win. Division winner versus 6 seed might still be attractive to NBC, but not if the division winner would hold the 4 seed, or worse, if the game just determines home field for a rematch the following week. So this game actually has a better shot if it’s not guaranteed to be for the division, because that ensures that the loser will fall to third in the division on top of falling behind the Chiefs-Chargers winner. (UPDATE 12/18: Just realized the Bengals are playing on Monday night, making this all the more unlikely and possibly dependent on the Steelers winning. This game may be just plain out unless there are no other options.)
  • Bills-Patriots might be picked if: The Bills win AND the Steelers beat the Chiefs AND the Ravens and Chargers lose AND the Lions win AND the Packers lose AND the Panthers-Falcons situation doesn’t happen. Even then, the Patriots have already locked up the division and a lot would depend on what the Broncos and Colts do; this game would probably need the Patriots to lose and the Broncos to win, and a Colts win would be nice as well. But if all this happens, the Bills would lose a tiebreaker to the Chiefs-Chargers winner with a loss, while the worst-case scenario with a win would be going to strength of victory against the Ravens. All told, chances are NBC will continue its streak of airing all NFC matchups since Week 17 went to all-division matchups in 2010.

Sunday Night Football Flex Scheduling Watch: Week 14

NBC’s Sunday Night Football package gives it flexible scheduling. For the last seven weeks of the season, the games are determined on 12-day notice, 6-day notice for Week 17.

The first year, no game was listed in the Sunday Night slot, only a notation that one game could move there. Now, NBC lists the game it “tentatively” schedules for each night. However, the NFL is in charge of moving games to prime time.

Here are the rules from the NFL web site (note that even with the bit about the early flexes, this was written with the 2007 season in mind, hence why it still says late games start at 4:15 ET instead of 4:25):

  • Begins Sunday of Week 5
  • In effect during Weeks 5-17
  • Up to 2 games may be flexed into Sunday Night between Weeks 5-10
  • Only Sunday afternoon games are subject to being moved into the Sunday night window.
  • The game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night during flex weeks will be listed at 8:15 p.m. ET.
  • The majority of games on Sundays will be listed at 1:00 p.m. ET during flex weeks except for games played in Pacific or Mountain Time zones which will be listed at 4:05 or 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • No impact on Thursday, Saturday or Monday night games.
  • The NFL will decide (after consultation with CBS, FOX, NBC) and announce as early as possible the game being played at 8:15 p.m. ET. The announcement will come no later than 12 days prior to the game. The NFL may also announce games moving to 4:05 p.m. ET and 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • Week 17 start time changes could be decided on 6 days notice to ensure a game with playoff implications.
  • The NBC Sunday night time slot in “flex” weeks will list the game that has been tentatively scheduled for Sunday night.
  • Fans and ticket holders must be aware that NFL games in flex weeks are subject to change 12 days in advance (6 days in Week 17) and should plan accordingly.
  • NFL schedules all games.
  • Teams will be informed as soon as they are no longer under consideration or eligible for a move to Sunday night.
  • Rules NOT listed on NFL web site but pertinent to flex schedule selection: CBS and Fox each protect games in five out of six weeks starting Week 11, and cannot protect any games Week 17. Games were protected after Week 4 in 2006 and 2011, because NBC hosted Christmas night games those years and all the other games were moved to Saturday (and so couldn’t be flexed), but are otherwise protected after Week 5. As I understand it, during the Week 5-10 period the NFL and NBC declare their intention to flex out a game two weeks in advance, at which point CBS and Fox pick one game each to protect.
  • In the past, three teams could appear a maximum of six games in primetime on NBC, ESPN or NFL Network (everyone else gets five) and no team may appear more than four times on NBC. I don’t know how the expansion of the Thursday Night schedule affects this, if it does. No team starts the season completely tapped out at any measure; ten teams have five primetime appearances each, but only the Packers, Bears, 49ers, Steelers, and Saints don’t have games in the main flex period, and all have games in the early flex period. I don’t know if both of the games scheduled for 12/20 count towards the total, or only the one in primetime. A list of all teams’ number of appearances is in my Week 5 post.

Here are the current tentatively-scheduled games and my predictions:

Week 16 (December 21):

  • Selected game: Seattle @ Arizona.

Week 17 (December 28):

AFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS
WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS
NORTH
48-4-1
58-5 7-6
2 tied at 8-5 7-6
SOUTH
39-4
68-5 7-6
7-6 7-6
WEST
210-3
8-5 7-6
8-5
EAST
110-3
2 teams at 7-6
NFC Playoff Picture
DIVISION
LEADERS
WILD CARD WAITING IN
THE WINGS (7-6)
SOUTH
45-8
59-4
5-8
EAST
39-4
69-4
9-4
NORTH
210-3
9-4
9-4
WEST
110-3
9-4
  • Tentative game: None (NBC will show game with guaranteed playoff implications).
  • Possible games: Panthers-Falcons, Browns-Ravens, Lions-Packers, Chargers-Chiefs, Bills-Patriots, Bengals-Steelers. Cardinals-49ers is out because it depends on the outcome of the Seahawks-Cardinals game even in the exceedingly unlikely scenario where it’s relevant, and if the Seahawks won the NFL would want to make the two NFC West games simultaneous even if there were no other options.
  • Chances of Lions-Packers: 60 percent. This is probably the odds-on favorite, but a lot depends on whether or not the NFL would want to take this game if the loser might still get a wild card spot. The Lions won the first game, so they just need to stay within a game of the Packers for the division to be on the line, but the best-case scenario for this game involves both teams slipping so they can’t fall back on a wild card spot. On the other hand, if both teams excel and the NFC East teams slip the winner could be guaranteed a first-round bye, which could outweigh the loser still getting a wild card spot. The fact that this is by far the most TV-friendly option also weighs in its favor.
  • Chances of Panthers-Falcons: 19 percent. Since moving to the all-division-games system for Week 17, the Sunday night game has a long tradition of hosting a division title game for the suckiest division in the NFL, but that looks to be unlikely this year. Falcons-Saints or Saints-Falcons would be a lock if they played each other, but instead this game’s chances depend on the Saints going on a losing streak while the Panthers and Falcons win. The Saints really only need to lose one more game than the Panthers or Falcons, though; a lot’s riding on the Week 16 Falcons-Saints game and how much the NFL would be willing to subject America to this game if there are other options available.
  • Chances of Browns-Ravens: 5 percent. There’s an exceedingly slim chance this game is for the division if the Browns win their next two, the Bengals lose their next two, and the Ravens win one more game than the Steelers. More likely, though still not likely, is that this game is for a wild card spot, but that would require the Browns to win one more game than the other 7-6 teams and the Chargers to fall behind in the wild card race as well. It does help that even if the Browns don’t beat the Bengals, they’d still hold the division tiebreaker over the Ravens with a win Week 17.
  • Chances of Chargers-Chiefs: 5 percent. The Chiefs were swept by the Broncos, so they’re already eliminated from the division, but the idea of this game being for a wild card spot is intriguing. As with the Lions, the Chiefs won the first game with the Chargers and so only need to stay within a game of them, but the AFC wild card race is very crowded when you consider the 7-6 teams. It’s highly unlikely the Chiefs can be guaranteed a wild card spot with a win; they’d need to at least outperform the teams I have listed ahead of them. Combine that with this game’s lack of marquee value and it’s a real long shot.
  • Chances of Bills-Patriots: 1 percent. There is exactly one scenario where this game even has a shot: the Bills win their next two, the Patriots lose their next two, and the Dolphins lose to the Vikings Week 16, since this scenario assumes they’d beat the Patriots. That doesn’t even get into the wild card situation.
  • Chances of Bengals-Steelers: 10 percent. This might have the best shot of any AFC game, but it’s still unlikely. It’s another game where the NFL would have to weigh the possibility of the loser getting a wild card spot. The most likely scenario might involve the teams being in wild card position going in but the loser guaranteed to fall behind the Browns-Ravens or Chargers-Chiefs winner. The lack of name value also hurts it.

The Hunt for Your Favorite Team’s Games

If you were a fan of the Oregon Ducks, the #2 team in the country, and you wanted to catch all your team’s games, you would have had to watch them on all of these channels:

  • South Dakota: Pac-12 Networks
  • Michigan State: Fox
  • Wyoming: Pac-12 Networks
  • @Washington State: ESPN
  • Arizona: ESPN
  • @UCLA: Fox
  • Washington: Fox Sports 1
  • California (from Levi’s Stadium): Fox Sports 1
  • Stanford: Fox
  • @Utah: ESPN
  • Colorado: Pac-12 Networks
  • @Oregon State: ABC
  • Arizona (Pac-12 Championship from Levi’s Stadium): Fox

If you were a fan of the USC Trojans, you would have spent time on all of these channels:

  • Fresno State: Fox
  • @Stanford: ABC
  • @Boston College: ESPN
  • Oregon State: ESPN
  • Arizona State: Fox
  • @Arizona: ESPN2
  • Colorado: Pac-12 Networks
  • @Utah: Fox Sports 1
  • @Washington State: Pac-12 Networks
  • California: ESPN
  • @UCLA: ABC
  • Notre Dame: Fox

If you were a fan of the #3 TCU Horned Frogs, you would have been watching these channels:

  • Samford: Fox Sports Southwest (or if not them, SportSouth, a handful of Plus feeds, or FCS Central)
  • Minnesota: Fox Sports 1
  • @SMU: CBS Sports Network
  • Oklahoma: Fox
  • @Baylor: ABC (or ESPN2)
  • Oklahoma State: Fox Sports 1
  • Texas Tech: Fox
  • @West Virginia: ABC (or ESPN2)
  • Kansas State: Fox
  • @Kansas: Fox Sports 1
  • @Texas: Fox Sports 1
  • Iowa State: ABC

If you were a fan of the Texas Longhorns, you would have been watching these channels:

  • North Texas: Longhorn Network
  • BYU: Fox Sports 1
  • UCLA (from JerryWorld): Fox
  • @Kansas: Fox Sports 1
  • Baylor: ABC (or ESPN3)
  • Oklahoma (from Fair Park): ABC
  • Iowa State: Longhorn Network
  • @Kansas State: ESPN
  • @Texas Tech: Fox Sports 1
  • West Virginia: Fox Sports 1
  • @Oklahoma State: Fox
  • TCU: Fox Sports 1

This isn’t limited to the Pac-12 and Big 12, two conferences whose rights are split between two different companies. The best teams tend to be plastered all over their conferences’ biggest channels, but if you were a fan of the Florida Gators, you would have been watching these channels:

  • Idaho: ESPNU
  • Eastern Michigan: SEC Network
  • Kentucky: SEC Network
  • @Alabama: CBS
  • @Tennessee: SEC Network
  • LSU: SEC Network
  • Missouri: ESPN2
  • Georgia (from Jacksonville): CBS
  • @Vanderbilt: SEC Network
  • South Carolina: SEC Network
  • Eastern Kentucky: SEC Network alternate feed
  • @Florida State: ESPN

If you were a fan of the Wisconsin Badgers you would have been watching these channels:

  • LSU (from Houston): ESPN
  • Western Illinois: BTN
  • Bowling Green: ESPN2
  • South Florida: ESPNU
  • @Northwestern: ESPN2
  • Illinois: ESPN2
  • Maryland: BTN
  • @Rutgers: ESPN
  • @Purdue: ESPNU
  • Nebraska: ABC
  • @Iowa: ABC (or ESPN2)
  • Minnesota: BTN
  • Ohio State (Big Ten Championship from Indianapolis): Fox

And if you were a fan of the Miami Hurricanes you would have been watching these channels:

  • @Louisville: ESPN
  • Florida A&M: ESPN3
  • Arkansas State: ESPNU
  • @Nebraska: ESPN2
  • Duke: ESPN2
  • @Georgia Tech: ESPN2
  • Cincinnati: Fox Sports Florida (or if not them, one of a handful of other RSNs or ESPN3)
  • @Virginia Tech: ESPN
  • North Carolina: ACC Network (CBS4 in Miami (incidentially pre-empting Air Force-Army and potentially encroaching on Georgia-Florida), ESPN3 if no station in your area)
  • Florida State: ABC
  • @Virginia: ESPN2
  • Pittsburgh: ESPN2

Every one of these schools has their games spread across at least five different networks. As mentioned, the better teams in the conferences with fewer partners have it better; Oregon and TCU had exactly five networks each (as would have Alabama had I included them), #4 Florida State had all but one of their games on ABC or ESPN, and #5 Ohio State had ten straight games on either ABC or BTN, but if you’re not one of those top teams following your team is an exercise in hunting down what network has your team’s game this week. And I haven’t included any teams outside the power 5 because you’re less likely to be following them on TV, but rest assured it isn’t because they don’t have to go through this; if anything they may have it worse. To follow all of Boise State’s games, you would have had to watch ESPN, ESPN2, ABC (or ESPN2), CBS Sports Network, ESPNU, and for the Mountain West Championship, CBS. Lesser Mountain West teams would likely have needed to find where their game was streaming on the “Mountain West Network” at least once; Conference USA teams, including Marshall, had to hopscotch between Fox Sports 1, CBS Sports Network, FSN, Fox College Sports, and whatever station was airing the American Sports Network game(s), with ESPN swooping in for the conference championship game, all just for conference games; the MAC and Sun Belt faced the prospect of watching most of their games on ESPN3; and all the Group of Five conferences except Conference USA faced the prospect of at least some games on ESPN3 or ESPNEWS.

I mentioned last week that the oversaturation of the cable network market is made apparent when cable networks play format musical chairs in a desperate attempt to attract an audience, but don’t think the relative health and lavishing of attention and money on the sports network market doesn’t mean it’s not immune to this problem. There is ultimately a very short list of sports and sports events that will attract substantial audiences to a network. College sports is much more decentralized than professional sports, allowing all the general-purpose sports networks (except NBCSN) to make a serious effort to grab a piece of the rights to whatever college conferences are popular enough to draw audiences. Whatever conferences’ rights they can’t get, they lure their most popular schools to play road games against schools in conferences whose rights they do have. That may be good for the chances of getting strong nonconference games (ESPN’s dominion over college football has resulted in them arranging attractive non-conference matchups for the purpose of their own ratings, but power-conference teams have also taken road trips to C-USA schools they wouldn’t otherwise visit so FS1 can have them, or to schools in conferences CBS Sports Network has the rights to), but it means fans often find themselves jumping from network to network to find the one that has their school’s game this week, lured to networks desperate for their eyeballs – before we even get to conference-owned networks or, in the case of the ACC, Big 12, and non-power five schools, the multiple platforms for games that would otherwise air on a conference network.

The relative centralization of pro sports, where each league rarely has more than one or two rights partners, means this is less of a problem there, but that’s not to say it doesn’t exist. The situation in the NFL, with two networks airing most of the games of each of the two conferences with some of them getting siphoned off to NBC, ESPN, and CBS/NFLN, is fairly simple, just in terms of why certain games are on certain networks based on their time slots, and in the other major sports most of your team’s games will air on their respective regional sports network, with a few occasions when you have to switch to the national partner, which is an event marking you as a good team and can be fairly easily predicted by what day it falls on. (The NHL has NBC and NBCSN; the NBA has ABC, ESPN and TNT. MLB is the least simple; it’s okay in the regular season with Fox, ESPN and Fox Sports 1, but then TBS and MLBN join in during the postseason under a scheme that doesn’t quite make sense because of baseball bungling their last contract negotiations.) In college football, only the worst, least-attractive teams can count on appearing on the conference network or other regional partner on a regular basis; for the others, not being on national television is the exception and not the rule, and unlike with the NFL, that means switching between several different partners seemingly at random with no correlation with time slot (as if it wasn’t bad enough the time slots themselves are only being determined two weeks in advance), for reasons that only make sense if you pay close attention to how the meat of the college football schedule is made, and doesn’t always make sense even then.

Could this problem get worse in the future? It depends, for example on whether or not the cable bubble starts to burst or how future contract negotiations play out with FS1, NBCSN, or CBS Sports Network becoming bigger players, or whether or not entities recognize the potential for confusion from switching back and forth between networks. But with the Big Ten set to rack in a big payday from being the last big contract up for bid for several years, I hope their fans know what they’re getting into. If ESPN and Fox share the rights, as I expect and sort of hope, this is what you have to look forward to.