Comments on: GOOD NEWS FRIDAY sponsored by Liberation Farm: TV RATINGS ARE UP, IS RACING?

By: Sportsbook

Sportsbook — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 17:59:51 +0000

Great site and nice article really like what its talking about.

By: B Drino

B Drino — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:04:26 +0000

Thank you for your help!

By: oWEN

oWEN — Sat, 23 May 2009 19:28:57 +0000

So much growth is potentially available everywhere. But nobody within racing promotes
the jocks and horses as rock stars. So, what do you get? A bunch of nice horses running
around in a circle without story line. NBC has done a great recently. But, you watch, the Breeders Cup - - which should be the Super Bowl— will have a bunch of nice horses ALL DRESSED IN THE SAME COLORED SADDLE CLOTH SO YOU CANT TELL ANY ONE FROM THE OTHER. Brilliant! There they go, all dressed in ROYAL BLUE! Is that 3 or 8?
Six or 9? 1 or 11? It’s like they do everything they possibly can to make it hard for people
to enjoy and, dare the thought, learn about horseracing. Sad.

By: Whobet

Whobet — Sat, 23 May 2009 00:46:08 +0000

Why did PaulickReport have to write this,

great article,

but why isn’t NTRA writing this kind of stuff,

Paulickreport rocks and Whobet supports Paulick Report

Check out my site, I got a BIG banner for PaulickReport:

http://mysite.verizon.net/whobet/saturday.html

By: zed

zed — Fri, 22 May 2009 21:25:13 +0000

According to Nielsen ratings for game 5 of the World Series the game generated a “Rating” of 8.4, a “Share” of 14 and a total viewers of 13.365 million. Down 17% from the previous year’s record low ratings. Also according to Nielsen, Game 6 of the NBA finals in 2008 had a “Rating” of 9.3; a “Share” of 17; and a total viewers of 14.941 million. To be fair, the ratings for all the sports are all over the board, depending on who’s web site you look at. Nielsen is the rating service that the networks and cable use to set ad rates. One could assume that they might be somewhat more reliable.

In reviewing the Nielsen ratings I find in notable that baseball droped 17% in one year, off a previous record low for the series. Does this make baseball a dying sport, with drug problems, meaningless suspensions and fines, and stars going being tried for drug related issues?. And horse racing has problems?

I’m not excusing horse racing, but look around you, you think the genetic mutants that play football and basketball, do that drug free? Sure they do, and Santa will be by your chimney for christmas.

Hey, Michael Vick has gone home this weekend. Maybe he Paragallo can run some horses under their kids names!

By: Paulsen

Paulsen — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:55:53 +0000

Just to correct some incorrect data you have here: Game 6 of the NBA Finals drew 16.9 million viewers last year, and Game 5 of the World Series drew 15.8 million.

– Paulsen

By: Christopher Smith

Christopher Smith — Fri, 22 May 2009 13:57:44 +0000

TV ratings for major television sporting events are greatly affected by the competition they face on any given day. While I don’t have the ratings of the competition directly at my fingertips and don’t have the time to go digging for them, I would not be surprised if the NBA Playoffs or NHL playoffs may have been less directly competitive as far as timeslots go for that day. In any case, an analysis such as this piece is not complete without a look at that competition on that particular day to prove that the results were anything more than arbitrary or even expected given the lack of sports TV competition.

By: Fred Pope

Fred Pope — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:32:01 +0000

Nice job Brad.

I agree, NBC deserves the credit for really promoting this year’s Derby. They probably looked at the competition and decided there was great opportunity to boost viewership by heavily promoting the event. It was a good call for them and Thoroughbred racing.

Then with a lot of folks watching, Calvin Borel’s wild and crazy personality kicked in and combined with Rachel Alexandra, gave NBC a lot of ammo for the Preakness.

It is a shame Triple Crown Productions could not hold their partnership together to have the third leg with the same network. But, let’s root for ABC to do a great job.

If Rachel doesn’t go, I sure hope Calvin gets to ride the Bird. He is the star of this Triple Crown.

By: Richard Coreno

Richard Coreno — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:28:44 +0000

The key is to build upon this and not simply have the TV ratings as entities upon themselves that are isolated from other issues such as safety, drugs and the viability of tracks as numerous states continue to lose the war with the economic tsunami. The NFL had Pete Rozelle and the NBA has David Stern…..Thoroughbred racing needs a young, dynamic commissioner who has the power to put these jigsaw puzzle pieces together.

By: Jeremy Jet

Jeremy Jet — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:20:28 +0000

Mr. Cummings â€“

I’m all for optimism, but the foundation on which you apparently have built yours is a joke. Do you actually believe that a spike in viewership of a particular Triple Crown event is some sort of sign of health, let alone increasing popularity of racing in the U.S.? That strikes me as naÃ¯ve to the extreme.

The trajectory of the U.S. racing industry not only continues to be decidedly downward, but the pace of decline has also clearly accelerated in recent years. I’m not going to bother ticking off a list of serious, and in many cases growing problems, as one would have to be blind not to see them. But Iâ€™d like you â€“ or anyone â€“ to demonstrate some correlation between viewership of one of the TC events and the health of the racing industry. To my knowledge, none has ever existed.

It is also bitterly ironic that you should end with the hollow assertion that drug issues and safety concerns are “being taken seriously”, as hand-wringing does little to resolve any problem.

Banning steroids? That was window-dressing offered up to placate Congress. Do you imagine that the industry would have taken such a step without having felt federal pressure? And now that such pressure has largely disappeared, do you really believe that “serious” steps are being taken to eliminate the endemic cheating that horseplayers from coast to coast know â€“ without the benefit of sophisticated tests â€“ continues to this day? If so, Iâ€™d like to hear about those bold steps.

If you are currently optimistic about the U.S. racing industry, I can only conclude that you also expect the economy to turn around any second, and that, given the wild success of the “surge”, you are considering Baghdad as your next get-away vacation spot.