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Big East basketball not scoring for Fox/Fox Sports 1

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junglehusky

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Big East basketball not scoring for Fox/Fox Sports 1

When Fox signed the Big East Conference to fill college basketball slots on Fox Sports 1 during the winter, the network was hoping it would bring viewers and help to build the new network as the original Big East did in the early days of ESPN. Well so far, the numbers show that the Big East has to catch on with viewers.

Two Big East games on Fox proper (Providence-St. John’s in late January and Northwestern-Butler in December) have drawn fewer than 400,000 viewers, the lowest audiences ever for college basketball on broadcast television. According to Sports Media Watch, two recent CBS games drew at least one million viewers.

...

Fox Sports 1 had games like Marquette-St. John’s draw about 107,000 viewers and 82,000 for DePaul-Seton Hall.

Back in 2013, the deal was viewed skeptically, or called a gamble/ "a huge risk for the network". So far looks like it's playing out that way.
 

zls44

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Great deal for the schools, dumb deal for Fox.
 

UConnDan97

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It's hard to believe that anyone thought those games would be highly viewed when considering that there would be no UConn, Cincy, Pitt, Syracuse, Louisville, West Virginia, Temple, or Notre Dame (although I'm not sure the ND thing was announced in time). Removing all of those teams essentially leaves a conference with small alumni bases and small national interest. GTown and St. Johns are probably the only teams that could command a national presence when they are top10 material, but we are a long ways off from them being top10 material...
 

Dooley

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NOBODY is watching Big East games. It didn't help FOX that the Nova/GTown game this past Saturday was a complete blowout. Most fanbases in the Big East are small, private Catholic school alumni bases and can't bring the numbers/ratings that large, public schools in the B1G or ACC can. Sure, small privates like Duke draw ratings but that's because they have a much better history than every program in the Big East AND they play against a good collection of large public schools with those afore-mentioned huge fanbases.

Simply put: nobody cares about Big East basketball. And this is a "good" year for that conference. The ratings are even worse in down years.
 
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Nelson will chime in and state that Fox is due to give the Big East a raise next contract.
 

nelsonmuntz

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We are so lucky to be on a network that pays us so well and gets us so many matchups against top competition on ESPN. Wait, how many games have ended up after 9 pm on CBS Sports?

What are the ratings for middle of the pack ACC or SEC games compared to the Big East? Taking a Creighton/DePaul game and comparing it to Duke/Louisville is a waste of time, but that is exactly what everyone in this thread has done.
 

nelsonmuntz

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NOBODY is watching Big East games. It didn't help FOX that the Nova/GTown game this past Saturday was a complete blowout. Most fanbases in the Big East are small, private Catholic school alumni bases and can't bring the numbers/ratings that large, public schools in the B1G or ACC can. Sure, small privates like Duke draw ratings but that's because they have a much better history than every program in the Big East AND they play against a good collection of large public schools with those afore-mentioned huge fanbases.

Simply put: nobody cares about Big East basketball. And this is a "good" year for that conference. The ratings are even worse in down years.

We are so much better off in the American.
 
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The 4 out of 5 games figure is inaccurate. Feel free to throw me a link.

Huh? The link is in the original post. And it does not appear to be inaccurate.

If you think so, call and correct Sports Media Watch

They say, of the Top 5, the Kansas-Kentucky game is the only one that did not have an ACC team playing.

This is ESPN's advantage...they get Louisville-Kentucky, Duke-Virginia, Duke-Wisconsin, North Carolina-Louisville...those are games that draw casual basketball fans. Fox has some good games...but will have a difficult time drawing close to ESPN (IMHO)
 
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Dooley

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We are so much better off in the American.

Ugh. No. We are better off in the B1G or ACC. Not in any mid-major conference (that includes the American AND Big East).
 
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Huh? The link is in the original post. And it does not appear to be inaccurate.

If you think so, call and correct Sports Media Watch

I just reread it. It doesn't say that anywhere. It's silly to suggest that 80% of ESPN's college basketball inventory is comprised of ACC match-ups, especially when you consider their contracts with the SEC, B1G, Big 12, AAC, Mountain West, PAC, etc. Perhaps you didn't communicate what you were thinking. Unfortunately, I can only go by what you write. If there's boneyard plug-in that allows me to read someone's mind, I will definitely look into it.
 
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I just reread it. It doesn't say that anywhere. It's silly to suggest that 80% of ESPN's college basketball inventory is comprised of ACC match-ups, especially when you consider their contracts with the SEC, B1G, Big 12, AAC, Mountain West, PAC, etc. Perhaps you didn't communicate what you were thinking. Unfortunately, I can only go by what you write. If there's boneyard plug-in that allows me to read someone's mind, I will definitely look into it.

This article is about the Top 5 drawing games in viewership....I don't know where your 80% booga booga comes from...

I communicated that four of the top five viewed basketball games on ESPN family of channels featured a ACC team.

You can't read that?
 
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There is no Boneyard plug in for reading comprehension...but you might try reading the sentence (slowly word for word if necessary, thinking about it a nano second...and then post.

What sometimes happens is that one's own idea blasts through, disabling reading comprehension, and a message is being mentally prepared before the the post being read is comprehended.

Ritalin may help some.
 
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We are so lucky to be on a network that pays us so well and gets us so many matchups against top competition on ESPN. Wait, how many games have ended up after 9 pm on CBS Sports?

What are the ratings for middle of the pack ACC or SEC games compared to the Big East? Taking a Creighton/DePaul game and comparing it to Duke/Louisville is a waste of time, but that is exactly what everyone in this thread has done.

Some "middling" team results during the week of January 19-25 on ESPNU (the channel with least viewership):
- Saturday game (8:20pm) between Memphis and Tulane drew 99K viewers
- Monday game at (9:00pm) featuring Florida State and Clemson drew 95K
- Tennessee at South Carolina drew 133K
- Boston College at Syracuse on a Tuesday drew 179K

Over on ESPN2:
- Kansas State vs. Oklahoma State drew 400K
- Arkansas at Missouri drew 455K
- UConn (Women) at Cincinnati drew 230K
- Cincinnati at UConn (Men) drew 455K a couple of weeks earlier

On ESPN, the numbers are astronomically different. The Big East numbers are brutal, with one game Seton Hall vs. Monmouth drawing 1,000 viewers.

http://painttouches.com/2014/01/08/big-east-fox-sports-1-struggle-to-gain-tv-ratings/
 

nelsonmuntz

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Some "middling" team results during the week of January 19-25 on ESPNU (the channel with least viewership):
- Saturday game (8:20pm) between Memphis and Tulane drew 99K viewers
- Monday game at (9:00pm) featuring Florida State and Clemson drew 95K
- Tennessee at South Carolina drew 133K
- Boston College at Syracuse on a Tuesday drew 179K

Over on ESPN2:
- Kansas State vs. Oklahoma State drew 400K
- Arkansas at Missouri drew 455K
- UConn (Women) at Cincinnati drew 230K
- Cincinnati at UConn (Men) drew 455K a couple of weeks earlier

On ESPN, the numbers are astronomically different. The Big East numbers are brutal, with one game Seton Hall vs. Monmouth drawing 1,000 viewers.

http://painttouches.com/2014/01/08/big-east-fox-sports-1-struggle-to-gain-tv-ratings/

that link is over a year old.

This year it appears that middle of the pack Big East games are competitive with middle of the pack ESPNU games, which is still not an apples to apples comparison since FSN1 is broadcasting essentially all Big East games while ESPN is cherry picking. Ratings also appear to be up significantly year over year. In other words, the audience is finding the product.

The argument that we are better off playing Tulane and UCF on CBS Sports at 9 pm than playing a traditional Big East rival at 7 on FSN is so stupid that it makes my brain hurt. And that doesn't even count the huge financial difference.
 
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This article is about the Top 5 drawing games in viewership....I don't know where your 80% booga booga comes from...

I communicated that four of the top five viewed basketball games on ESPN family of channels featured a ACC team.

You can't read that?

I read it just fine. Thanks. Here's what you wrote (I copied and pasted it for accuracy):

"4 out of 5 Hoops games on the ESPN family of channels have featured a ACC team."
 
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that link is over a year old.

This year it appears that middle of the pack Big East games are competitive with middle of the pack ESPNU games, which is still not an apples to apples comparison since FSN1 is broadcasting essentially all Big East games while ESPN is cherry picking. Ratings also appear to be up significantly year over year. In other words, the audience is finding the product.

The argument that we are better off playing Tulane and UCF on CBS Sports at 9 pm than playing a traditional Big East rival at 7 on FSN is so stupid that it makes my brain hurt. And that doesn't even count the huge financial difference.

The link for the Seton Hall comment is from last year. All the other data is from a couple of weeks ago. Per the OP link (from yesterday) the BE numbers are a fraction of the worst ACC, SEC and Big 12 I could find, on the least viewed ESPN station, which addresses the comment you made.
 
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zls44

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The American and the Big East have almost the exact same CBS Sports Network deal. BOTH conferences have just as many games on there, only difference is that they're on there on Wednesdays while the AAC is on Thursdays.

UConn/DePaul would be on CBSSN, just like UConn/Tulane was. It's the exact same crap.
 
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I gave up caring about other conferences, and even other teams in UConn's conference, a couple years ago. It sucks, because I used to really enjoy college basketball. Now I know that UConn is struggling this year, but couldn't tell you about anyone we haven't played. I'm going to suck at picking a bracket this year.

Why is that pertinent for this thread? Well, I know I should care about the AAC's ratings compared to others, but I don't. I dislike some of our old bretheren, and I know it's not practical to be in the Big East (and I don't want to jump into an argument on dropping football), but I admit that I'd much rather be in the Big East (even the current Big East) than the AAC.

I didn't love when the Big East lost BC, Miami and VT and replaced them with Cincy, Louisville, USF, but we still had other rivals and it didn't surprise me that we at least developed a healthy rivalry with Cincy and Louisville because of their history of success and support of sports. I cannot see that ever happening with anyone in the AAC. If you can, I'm jealous of your AAC glasses.
 
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I read it just fine. Thanks. Here's what you wrote (I copied and pasted it for accuracy):

"4 out of 5 Hoops games on the ESPN family of channels have featured a ACC team."

Your reading comprehension appears to be better than his short term memory. He needs to stay off the left-wing Lucky Strikes.
 
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