Clarence Beeks has delivered the fifth 2018 Friday morning crop report. This week, it’s time to sell! sell! sell!
According to SportsBusiness Daily, Thursday night’s game on FOX between the Colts and Patriots generated a 9.9 overnight rating. That’s down 11 percent from last year’s Week Five Thursday night rating for a Patriots-Buccaneers game.
The Colts-Pats game looked to be a blowout in the first half, and many may have changed the channel or gone to bed at intermission. Also, the game was played against extra innings for Rockies-Brewers on FS1 and the start of the Braves-Dodgers game on MLB Network.
Meanwhile, and as noted by SportsBusiness Daily, the combined cable-news audience for MSNBC, CNN, and FOX showed a 41-percent increase over the same night in 2017, given the ongoing Brett Kavanaugh kerfuffle.
Of course, a great matchup may have changed the outcome for the NFL game. Colts-Patriots doesn’t have the cachet it once did. That same problem could arise next Thursday night, when FOX tries to jam the “Now it’s a Game!” slogan onto a contest between the Eagles and Giants, with the home team staring down a likely 1-4 record and the Eagles in danger of making the trek up I-95 at 2-3.