Here’s a fun little quirk. Remember that Monday Night Football game between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys. Yeah, the one that drew almost 18 million viewers, making it the biggest draw of the year and the fourth most-watched cable program ever?
Obviously, millions wanted to watch. But not in Dallas. The game earned a 31.2 rating in the Dallas-Ft. Worth market, which sounds huge until you consider that the Cowboys-Washington Redskins season opener “scored a 39.6 rating (1 million homes) for NBC’s Sunday Night Football” and 1.06 million saw last year’s Cowboys-Giants affair.
What did we learn?
That bad teams don’t draw locally. This makes sense, of course, but the Dallas-New York game shows this in dramatic fashion.
The Cowboys are 1-5. They aren’t a good football team. Residents of the Dallas-Ft. Worth area – fans, presumably – don’t want to watch Tony Romo get pummeled into the ground, again. They will look elsewhere.
Nationally, however, the game is a big draw because it features two marquee squads. The quality of the squads matters less than the teams playing.
Besides, it’s football. What else are you going to do on a Monday night? Watch Dancing With The Stars?