NBA Finals -- Game 1 -- NBC's "America's Got Talent" Tops The Sports Telecast -- However, That's Not The Worst Of It -- This Is Really, Really Bad -- July 7, 2021

Updates

July 9, 2021: apparently better than expected -- link here.

In the latest TV show ratings, the first Thursday installment of CBS‘ Love Island Season 3 drew 1.64 million viewers and a 0.3 demo rating — up 11 percent and steady versus the same night last summer, while also on par with Wednesday’s premiere leading out of Big Brother.

ABC’s coverage of the NBA Finals Game 2 dominated Thursday in both total viewers and in the demo, posting 7 mil and 2.2 in preliminary numbers — up a tick from Game 1’s early tallies (which swelled significantly once Nielsen finals dribbled in).

July 9, 2021: Now this: the bad news continues to come in. Forbes. Tanked again. Outkick. Throw out 2020 -- it was a really, really bad year but it can be (falsely) blamed on the pandemic. We talked about that before. Everybody was home in 2020, had nothing to do, and sports ratings on television should have been surging. Nothing else to do. Didn't happen. But I digress. 

• 2019, apparently, was the worst year on record for the NBA with regard to television ratings. That was until this year, 2021. 

July 9, 2021: why the league is incentivized to keep end of games as slow as possible. This is not hard to figure out. Let's see. Two minutes left in the game. Championship on the line. Each team has six time-outs left. All that ad money. LOL. To paraphrase a line from Colombo: what do they do with all that money?

Original Post

Story everywhere.

This is one link.

In the latest TV ratings, ABC’s coverage of the NBA Finals opener averaged 6.4 million total viewers and a 2.1 rating, down 13 and 18 percent from the preliminary numbers for last year’s Game 1 (which was pandemic-delayed until August) yet still easily topping Tuesday in the demo.

Opening ABC’s night, the Jimmy Kimmel special did 4.6 mil/1.2, followed by NBA Countdown‘s 3.8 mil/1.1.

NBC’s America’s Got Talent (6.9 mil/0.8) slipped two tenths in the demo yet managed to deliver Tuesday’s largest audience. College Bowl (2.7 mil/0.4) was steady.

One site said the NBA game edged out AGT; another site said the NBA game came in second. 

Okay, let's go back. Not mentioned:

Game 1 of the 2020 NBA Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat attracted 7.4 million viewers. The game was the lowest-rated NBA Finals game since Game 5 of the 1994 NBA Finals featuring the Houston Rockets and the New York Knicks.

So,  last night's game 1 of the 2021 NBA finals had an even worse night, almost 15% fewer viewers than the incredibly low-rated game 1 last year.

Exactly as predicted. I assume the "only" ones watching were sports fans living in Milwaukee and some sports fans living in Phoenix.

Game 2 tonight.