Maybe it’s style of play, competition from other sports, the pandemic, grumpiness over players’ social activism, cable news viewership or a combination, but the fact remains that local television ratings for Texans games are off to their most sluggish start since 2009.
The NFL continues, however, to be the most-watched property on television, and analysts say the league will double its rights fees in the next round of negotiations.
And while the Texans are at the bottom of the AFC South standings, at least they continue to be the most-watched programming in town, albeit at lower levels than the Nielsen Co. has recorded here in more than a decade through the first two weeks.
The Texans’ lopsided loss to the Ravens on Sunday produced a Nielsen rating of 15.9 with a 34 share and an average audience of 740,000 viewers on KHOU (Channel 11). That’s the lowest rating for a Texans game in Houston since 10.4 for a loss to the Colts in the 2017 season finale.
Houston’s opening loss to the Chiefs on Sept. 10 had a rating of 19.8 with 740,000 viewers, although that audience was diluted by the fact that KPRC (Channel 2) stayed with local programming from the game site until the bottom of the hour of a game that ended at 10:30 p.m. The game itself registered a 20.6 rating on Channel 2.
Still, not since 2009, when the Texans had an average rating in the 15.6 range for games against the Jets and Titans to open the year, have they started more slowly in the ratings than this season, and with a prime time season opener in 2020 to boot.
In the wake of the furor over the NFL’s viewership drop in 2016-17 and its subsequent rebound, analysts advise caution in pinning too much on the first two or so weeks of NFL numbers, which include some upticks as well as downticks.
“It’s all about what the NFL delivers compared to everyone else, and the gap in that regard has never been wider,” said Patrick Crakes, a former Fox Sports executive who now works as a television consultant.
“We have an increased sports viewing audience that is dealing with lots of options. The NFL’s reach was down in Week 1, but the average length of viewership was up, so casual fans were obviously moving around to other things.”
Crakes said he expects NFL viewership to be flat for this season, but he also expects other properties to decline. Sunday’s Emmy Awards on ABC, for example, recorded their smallest audience on record, averaging 6.1 million viewers for an awards show in which not a single over-the-air program won a major award.
“Even if the NFL declines by 10 percent, it value will remain to programmers and advertisers,” Crakes said. “The ratings are beside the point. The league still will be able to double its value in the next round of bargaining.”
NBC’s opening Thursday audience was down 12 percent from a year ago as the Texans failed to mount a significant challenge to the Chiefs. The seven Sunday and Monday windows in Week 1 averaged 15.8 million viewers, down 8 percent from a year ago, according to Sports Business Daily.
The Cowboys-Rams game on Sunday Night Football, which was down 15 percent from a year ago, contributed to that decline.
However, Fox Sports showed a 10 percent bump for its opening-week doubleheader, with digital viewership included, thanks in part to interest in Tom Brady’s debut with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Week 2 also produced mixed results. The Thursday night Browns-Bengals games on NFL Network was even with last year’s Buccaneers-Panthers opener despite competing with NHL and NBA games.
Fox’s noon window Sunday was up 10 percent from a year ago to 16.8 million despite a lackluster local audience for the Cowboys’ comeback win over the Falcons, which was down by about 20 percent Dallas-Fort Worth from the average early Cowboys telecast.
CBS’ early window game averaged 9.8 million viewers, down from 13.75 million last year for Week 2, and the late window, which included Chargers-Chiefs and Ravens-Texans, averaged 18.9 million, down 19 percent from last year but still the most-watched telecast of the weekend.
Meanwhile, Monday Night Football, which this season airs on ABC in addition to ESPN, averaged 15.4 million viewers, up from 12.2 million for a 2019 Week 2 game that aired on ESPN alone.
Crakes acknowledges that the NFL faces challenges this season, including declining viewership for all consumers of traditional TV. The number of televisions in use Sunday, according to the Nielsen Co., was down by 3 percent to 7 percent throughout the afternoon and early evening.
Cable news viewership, driven by coverage of COVID-19 and the presidential election, also takes a bite out of viewership. Those channels drew 2.5 million viewers on average from 11 a.m. until 6:30 p.m., up from 1.6 million last year.
The unprecedented crowded nature of the sports calendar, with the NBA, NHL and major golf events all sharing space with the NFL and baseball, also will come into play.
Sunday’s U.S. Open golf on NBC, for example, drew a 2.0 Nielsen rating and 3.2 million viewers, which was down from the event’s normal window on the Father’s Day weekend but several hundred percent higher than the menu of rugby and IndyCar racing that NBC aired on this weekend a year ago.
KPRC (Channel 2) recorded a 2.3 rating for the U.S. Open, which might have carved a few tenths of a ratings from the Texans’ audience.
Still, with reduced Texans viewership, a crowded sports calendar, politics, social unrest and the pandemic malaise taken into account, the average NFL game on NBC, CBS and Fox stations in Houston still has drawn an average audience of 338,000 viewers through two weeks, an audience that no competitor can touch and few advertisers would wish to ignore.
“I thought that the NFL would be able to normalize news usage, and I probably will be wrong about that,” Crakes said. “But we’ll see. There’s a lot of activity now, and we need a whole season of matchups to see how things work out for this season.”
david.barron@chron.com
Twitter: @dfbarron
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