NFL Draft goes to primetime Thursday

Thursday is network TV's mega-competition night. The nets will not be pleased their business partner is trying to cut into the audience. Also, what is to prevent TNT (which I assume will get NBA playoff rights for that night, because ESPN will be busy) from just running a crawl with the picks under the game. That's all you need. In the final analysis, the draft is just a list.

 

I really believe that the draft gained in its popularity with the noon start all those years ago.

The team's main top two rounds of picks were while the sun was still up on Saturday and people were abuzz, talking about those picks (really, just the first-rounder) for the rest of the day, evening, weekend.

Now, they put the only part of the draft 90 percent of viewers really give a shit about so late at night that a bunch of em have to be in bed for work the next morning.

Really dumb.

Mind-numbingly so.

 

Correct. Which is why I cannot understand why anyone would watch it.

Check it out for 5 minutes to see the crawl of teams and who got picked? Sure. But "watching the draft"?

I'd just as soon spend the afternoon cleaning litter boxes.

 

People watch CSI, NCIS, The Mentalist, Insert Random CBS Procedural here, every week even though every episode is the same damn thing over and over and over and over and over and over again.

To each his own.

There's probably plenty of stuff you watch that people could find incredibly stupid.

 

This is a great idea. If I was still covering the NFL, I would love this too...

 

From there end, it makes perfect sense. Brings more revenue and more time to promote the sport and have their analysts/broadcasters showing their faces even more.

They couldn't care less about deadlines and the beat writers. All national Web sites will get it up, as it goes along, and it is sure to bring more ratings.

 

I question whether it will really increase ratings that much. We will see, of course, but let's just say, for example, that a West Coast team, let's call them, oh, the Raiders, have the number one pick. OK, that's your top audience right there. It's 4:30 p.m. PDT. They are in their cars, heading home from work.
Actually, it occurs to me that it's worse if West Coast teams have picks after number one in the top 5-10, because the audience is still commuting, and interest is maximized because they aren't sure who's going to be picked. Pick one is usually a done deal.

 

If they speed up Round 1 so it can take no longer than 2-3 hours, this will do incredibly well on Thursday night.

They should keep in mind that in late April it could be going up against one of the final shows of the season of Grey's Anatomy or CSI. But I'll bet they get very good ratings.

 

Mizzou, how are they going to do that? Two hours would be less than four minutes a pick. Just the demands of the television shows (interviews, film clips, etc) mandate twice as much time as that for first rounders. The teams would rebel against that kind of time pressure for first round picks, considering what they have to pay them.
A quick first round is like an Oscars telecast going off on schedule. Never going to happen, because the event is too important to the participants.
I just question the rationale that there are a whole lot of casual fans out there who don't want to waste a Saturday watching the draft but will be happy to tune in on Thursday night. My guess is, the draft audience is the draft audience, and it will expand some, but not very much, due to the switch.
I could be wrong. But the NBA draft isn't exactly must-see prime time TV, and it has way less competition than the football draft will.

 

They have destroyed a big niche they had with this move.

 

Easiest column Phil Mushnick will ever write.

 

The NBA draft was must-see TV before all the foreigners and high school kids and college freshmen took over the draft.

Now most of the sports-watching public knows next to nothing about the guys getting picked.