September 18, 2024 • 51 mins
Peter opens the podcast with a take on Bryce Young’s unprecedented benching in Carolina and the public reaction to Brian Callahan’s treatment of Will Levis in Week 2. Then, he brings in Michael Mulvihill, President, Insights and Analytics, Fox Sports, to discuss the dominance of the NFL in the media space. Mulvihill lifts the curtain on a variety of topics, including how the networks rank the top 50 matchups they’d like to broadcast for the NFL league’s office and schedule makers. They finish by discussing the teams that have the biggest national fan base, how Nielsen ratings still matter, and discuss the rare 10-game early window that was such a hit on NFL Red Zone last week.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
The Season with Peter Schrager is a production of the
NFL in partnership with iHeartRadio. What's Up, Everybody, Welcome to
the Season with Peter Schrager, our week three edition of
(00:27):
the regular season.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Twenty twenty four. Got a really cool.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Guest up ahead, Mike moulva Hill, who is the president
of Insights and Analytics.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
At Fox Sports.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I've grown to really love Mike and his insights over
the last several years of getting to know him. He's
a really cool guy, big horse racing fan. We're not
going to get into that. We're going to talk more
about behind the curtain of what you are seeing on
television every single week and how decisions are made as
far as which games go where, when they are placed,
(00:58):
which broadcast crew is calling each game, and Mike gives
us some really really interesting takes on football as a
whole that's come up in a second. I wanted to
start the podcast though, talking about young quarterbacks, their feelings,
their emotions, our feelings towards them. Why do I say
that two interesting things happened on Sunday that it becomes
(01:23):
rele towards our approach to talking about young quarterbacks and
the way young quarterbacks develop, and the first one of
them was Bryce Young being absolutely brutal again in a
terrible loss to the Chargers that was seen by about
one percent of the country Chargers fans, Panthers fans, and
nobody else because it was a game he couldn't watch.
(01:44):
It was horrible quarterback play from Bryce Young and horrible
offense from the Carolina Panthers for the second straight week,
and if you're going back to last year, really for
the eighteenth or nineteenth straight week. And you know, the
news came out on early Tuesday morning that Bryce Young
(02:04):
was being benched, and I think our initial reactions was like,
how the hell can you bench him?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
This was a first overall pick, And in fact.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I've done the research, he is the only first overall
pick to be benched within the first two weeks of
his second season. If he was starting in week two,
it sounds like it's in the weeds. But basically it's like,
this doesn't happen. It's unprecedented in a sophomore season. You
become the starter if you're a number one overall pick
(02:31):
and you're given the reins and let's go.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
They put in Andy Dalton and.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
The initial reaction from a lot of people was the
owner is an idiot, the team has failed him, They've
done this thing wrong, and how is that beneficial for
anybody putting in Andy freaking Dalton. And my take is this,
You've got fifty two other people in that locker room,
and fifty two other men who play professional sports and
(02:56):
have their own stories, and a lot of.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Them are veterans.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
I'm looking at Jadavian Clowney, I'm looking at Derek Brown,
one of the great defensive tackles in this league, and
they're at practice every day. And it does not benefit
Dave Canalis, the head coach.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
In any way to.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Do this unless it's the only way to be competitive
and it's the only way to keep the trust of
that veteran locker room. I would have to imagine that
Andy Dalton is out playing Bryce Young every single day
in practice. I would have to imagine that the rest
of the veterans in that locker room and the other
(03:32):
young players too, are looking at this and saying, we
cannot compete with that guy. And if you're a fan
of the team, the products has been so bad over
the last two seasons that this drastic measure has to
be taken if it gives them even a slightly more
competitive chance on Sundays. Maybe it blows up in the face,
(03:52):
maybe the Raiders win forty two to nothing this weekend
against the Carolina Panthers. But I could assure you David
Tepper does not want to bench Bryce Young. I could
assure you Dave Canalis does not want to bench Bryce Young.
I could assure you Dan Morgan, the general manager, does
not want to bench Bryce Young. And I can show
you Brent Tillis, who is one of the new executives,
there is in no way going into this season saying
(04:13):
I hope we bench Bryce Young in the second week.
This measure is so extreme and is so against the grain,
and is so unpopular that it tells me things are
as bleak as they seem. And they had to do
this to a salvage the season, be salvage the locker room,
(04:36):
and see salvage any chance of even being competitive at
this point. Now, as for Bryce Young's feelings, I don't
know that. It certainly doesn't help him being shelved and
embarrassed in this way, But does it help him being
behind center and losing by twenty thirty points and making
careless mistakes and being under durest because I don't know,
(04:58):
I don't think that helps him either. So he'll take
a step back and he'll watch now if you listen
to this podcast, we had Dave Canalis on the head
coach in July, and his big take with Bryce Young
was that he's gonna love him up and he's gonna
make sure he knows he's loved and he's going to
coach him up and make sure he gets everything he needs.
(05:19):
X's and o's wise. That's what he did, which you
know Smith when he helped resurrect his career in Seattle,
and that's what he did with Baker Mayfield when Baker
was signed to a one year deal for four million
dollars last year. So Canal has spent all summer, all spring,
in the early part of the fall with Bryce Young,
loving him up, coaching him up, and he believes that
(05:41):
his best option is to shelve him and bench him.
That tells me that it had to be done, that
there's a lot more there that we don't know, that
things are even worse than what we see on Sundays.
I am telling you, if you're a coach, who prides
himself on being a quarterback guru and being able to
resurrect anything and being able to get the most out
(06:03):
of someone. To bench that young player in the September
portion of the season tells me that this is an
extreme move that they felt had to be done to
salvage the rest of the team. Remember, it's not just
the quarterback you have to worry about. There are fifty
two other alpha males in that locker room. There's a
(06:23):
fan base in that building, and there is an overall
effort and competitive side of this game that maybe they
felt the best option was to just put.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Out Andy Dalton, who we know what we're getting. Andy's Andy, Like,
you know what you're getting.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
I'm not.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
He's not winning any awards in All Pro Awards. Now.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Look last year Joe Flacco won Comeback Player of the Year.
Maybe Dalton does that. I don't foresee it. I don't
think the Panthers are going to rattle off seven wins
or anything. But I do think it tells you something,
and it's not just immediately how stupid everyone is. These
are smart people and they see it every single day
and they see what a lot of us didn't because
(07:01):
we didn't watch it on Sunday on tape on Monday morning.
I'm not a fan of the decision. I would have
love to have seen Bryce thrive this year because I
think he's a great kid and who knows, maybe he's
got a bright future ahead of him. But for the
Panthers to make that decision, it wasn't a popular one
and it certainly wasn't one that they desired. It tells
me that they had to. The other young quarterback that
(07:21):
I would focus on is Will Levis. So Levis is
coming into his first time full time starting season and
there's a lot of hype around him.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Here.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
He had this great win on Thursday Night against the
Dolphins last year, and he's this alpha male, same type
of deal Bro's bro Whole deal made a knucklehead play
in Week one, and then in week two, they're playing
the Jets and they're winning and they're marching and they're
they're looking to put a field goal up to go
up ten nothing on the Jets.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And get a win.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Here he throws another bone headed interception or a bone
headed turnover, and on camera, Brian Callahan is caught saying,
what the bleep are you doing? And screaming at Levis,
they would go on to lose, and instead of us
as a media as a whole talking on Monday morning
about what happened to the Titans, how did they let
(08:09):
Brayleen Allen run through him? How did they let Breese
Hall catch that pass? Or even better, like, let's talk
about the positives of what Will Levis did a deep
pass to Calvin. All anyone wanted to focus on was
Will Levis's feelings and Brian Callahan being caught, you know,
trashing him, calling him a you know, what the blank
are you doing on camera? And Ryan Fitzpatrick, who I
(08:31):
think I respect as much as any X quarterback in
the league, as he played for everyone, He's seen it all.
He had thoughts on social media, didn't like it, didn't
like how we were treating the young quarterbacks, like what
are we doing here?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
My take?
Speaker 1 (08:45):
And I would talk to FITZI about it, like it was.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
A moment Callahan lost his cool.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
He too is a quarterback guru, was hired to nourish
and build up Will Levis, and in that moment, I
think he was really frustrated. And I would say, yeah,
that was his reaction, and it was caught on camera,
what the blank are you doing?
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Because I could assure you he likely.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Spent a lot of time during the week saying you
cannot kill us with plays like this, and showed the
one from.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Week one over and over and over again.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
And sure enough, as clear as the day is long,
he does it again, and Brian's reaction was a visceral
one of.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
What are you doing? Come on, You're better than that.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
He would later come out and say he's got to
be smarter about thinking about what's on camera, but he
does not regret his reaction and his feelings to that reaction. Again,
we are quick to bash the coach, bash the adult,
and say, let's treat these kids with kids glove. Will
Levis is it adult himself, and he is the quarterback
(09:54):
of an NFL team. I think Will Levis would tell you,
although he doesn't love being shown up by his coach,
he's got to be better than that and he shouldn't
do that. It's interesting how we talk about these young
quarterbacks because I think in the same breath that we
want to throw out that Ryan Leaves a bust and
JaMarcus Russell was a bust, and this guy was a
Buss and yet in twenty twenty four, I think we're
(10:15):
a lot more sensitive to these quarterbacks, and maybe in
some cases we shouldn't be. Maybe Bryce Young had to
be benched, maybe Will Levis had to be yelled at.
And that is my sermon on this beautiful Wednesday morning.
Our guest is Mike Moulva Hill. I had talked about
him already. I think you're really going to enjoy this.
Let's get to the interview from the season with Peter.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Schrager with no further ado.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
One of the smartest men in sports television and a
guy who's insights I not only read week to week
on his Twitter feed, but I also seek out proactively
because we're colleagues at Fox Sports. I think he's one
of the most brilliant guys in our industry, and he's
a great dude.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
His name is Mike Mulva Hill.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
He's the president of Insights and Analytics at Fox Sports,
and I am thrilled to have him on the season
with Peter Schreeger. Mike, good afternoon from your old home,
New York City.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me on.
We've been talking about doing this for a while, and
I'm excited to get into it with you. I got
an extra ice coffee with me today to try to
keep up with your energy level. We'll see how that goes.
But yeah, I see you've got one too, and just
anxious to dive in and talk about what we're seeing
so far this season, all.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Right before we start your job, because I think a
lot of people see what you tweet and it holds
a lot of weight.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
And then you speak at these conferences.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
But like your job, if you were to give an
elevator's speech to a college student who you meet and say, well,
you've got a really cool title, you work at a
really cool company.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
What is your job exactly? What would you say you'd
do at Fox Sports.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
I think a lot of people wonder what exactly I
do at Fox Sports, so I will try to explain it.
I think the elevator pitches. I use every source of
data that's availed to us, which often means Nielsen TV ratings,
to come up with strategies that will grow our audience,
get more people watching games on Fox, and hopefully just
make us a more efficient company.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Okay, And in that purview, you deal with not just NFL,
but you're talking women's volleyball, and you're talking college hockey
and whatever we have on FS one in the middle
of May, like you're overseeing all of it as far
as giving your insights and your analytics to the executives
who make those programming decisions.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Yeah, trying to write. I do that for both the
sports side and the entertainment side. We try to act
as almost an advocate for the audience and an advocate
for sports fans. Right the fans are telling us every
day with their remote controls what they like and what
they don't like about what we're putting on the air.
We try to listen to that via the ratings, and then,
as you say, communicate to the most senior people in
(12:59):
the company what's working, what isn't, what we think could
be working better. And we work with our league partners
at the NFL, collegiate conferences, Major League Baseball, and all
our other content partners to just try to come up
with the smartest way to grow the popularity of their events.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Okay, so ten years ago you'd go by Nielsen ratings,
which might be archaic. Now, what types of tools do
you have and which types of metrics do you guys
use now in a twenty twenty four landscape.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Well, we still use the Nielsen ratings very heavily. We
rely on that data a lot. It's probably the most
important source that we have because it's still the currency
of our business, right like, all of our advertising is
bought and sold based on the data that we get
from Nielsen. But we're also looking at other sources. Lately,
we've become really focused on using Google Search trends, right Like,
(13:48):
we can look at Google Search activity city by city,
team by team, athlete by athlete and try to get
a very real time read on what fans are most
interested in. So when we sit down and do our
NFL map every week and figure out what game is
going to go into every market in the country, a
lot of cases we're looking at Google activity in a
(14:09):
particular city just to see if one team or one
game is popping over another game. And because that Google
data is so real time, it's so immediate and current,
we're probably actually leaning on that more than we're leaning
on our ratings history. Google has become a really important
source of information for us that's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So you'll see what people are searching online Is that
how they do it or is it they have a
more comprehensive algorithm.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
No, it's really just as simple as what are people
searching for on a market by market basis, and Google,
to their credit, makes that data freely accessible to anybody
that takes the time to look at it. So we're
looking at that not just for guidance in our sports decisions,
but we're trying to use it as a measure of
awareness of entertainment programming. We use it to try to
(14:58):
measure interest in current news events, whether that's the campaign
or the conventions, the debates. It's a really good real
time measure of what people are actually interested in right now.
And as I say, it's become a key source of
information for us.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
So I would imagine Google is very very active on
Gordon Ramsey, Joel McHale, Rob Low and cooking shows.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Are we in? Does that sound accurate or No?
Speaker 3 (15:25):
That's right, and we charged job to get even more
active on those terms.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Right, big fan of it, and I'm excited for the
McHale show that's coming out.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
The crime what is the crime scene Kitchen? I saw
the bit he did with Edelman this week and I'm like, Yep,
I'm in. I love it big.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Joel Mcheal guy, we love that. Please keep promoting Fox
entertainment shows on this podcast. We encourage that.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
We will do that. We will do that.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
I don't have much history with Chicago Fire or the
NBC shows. I am a Fox guy through and through,
and I rock with the masked singer as you know.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
All right, let's get into football. It's very early on.
We're just two.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Weeks in, but every year is different as far as trends,
as far as what we're seeing. What are some takeaways
audience wise, just two weeks into this current NFL season.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Yeah, Look, I think that the primary takeaway is that
the league has come back at least as strong as ever,
if not stronger than ever. And we hear a lot
about changes in our business and the fact that people
are cutting the cord, maybe getting out of their cable packages,
moving more of their viewership to streaming platforms, and all
(16:33):
of that is real. And yet even as people move
out of their traditional cable bundles, the audiences for the
NFL and for college football just continue to grow. The
resilience of those properties is pretty remarkable. So we're two
weeks into the season, the average audience for all NFL games,
not just on Fox but across every carrier is up
(16:55):
eight percent. The audience share that we're seeing is amazing.
You know, if you look at all games, all networks,
the average share of men ageat into thirty four that
are watching a typical NFL game is sixty six percent.
So sixty six percent of all the young men that
are watching TV at any particular time are watching an
(17:18):
NFL game. Maybe even more amazing, the share of women
eighteen to thirty four for a typical NFL game is
a fifty. So while we think of the of the
NFL and we think of football as being a traditional
male vehicle, that female audience becomes more important to us
all the time. I think if you go through television history,
you're just not going to find that many shows that
(17:39):
are doing a sixty six share or a fifty share.
You really have to go back to, you have to
go back decades to things like I Love Lucy Max Shard,
Theater Mash, you know, shows that just come from a
different era of media consumption. That's the stranglehold that the
NFL has on the audience. And yes, we're only two
weeks in, but it just shows no signs of slowing
(18:03):
down or reversing. I think the degree to which the
NFL bell sort of towers over everything else on the
TV landscape just becomes greater and greater each year.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, there's that stat we get every end of the season.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
It's like or at the end of the year.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Like eighty eight of the top one hundred shows or
NFL related like that only gets bigger and bigger, and
the pie, if you will, only gets to be gobbled
up more and more by the NFL. Can you can
you share us with some of those analytics and metrics
historically over I guess the last calendar year of just
how dominant football is and then NFL. Yes, But then
(18:39):
when you add in college football, I think that gets
an even bigger share of the top one hundred shows.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Yeah, you know. There are a lot of ways that
we can parse the data to try to make that
argument about the power of live sports. But I think
one that tends to be really understandable to people and
gets a lot of pickup in the press is that
look at the hundred most watch shows of any given year,
and so last year, ninety three of the hundred. Most
(19:05):
watch shows on television were live sports events, and the
vast majority of those were NFL games. In fact, it
may even be the ninety three were NFL games and
a few more were other sports events. So if you
were to go back twenty or thirty years, that number
of the top hundred that comes from live sports, it
used to be like twenty of one hundred. Right now
(19:27):
it's virtually everything. And I think that has to do
with the fragmentation of the entertainment audience, the fact that
some of that entertain entertainment audience has gone to streaming,
and I think there's something going on there where sports
and especially the NFL has become really the only thing
that still brings people from all walks of life together
(19:51):
in real time. Right Like when I was a kid, Yes,
the NFL did twenty five million viewers a week, but
there were a lot of TV shows that did twenty
million viewers a week, and we all watched the same TV,
We listened to the same music, we saw the same movies.
People were sort of more engaged in community based activities then,
whether it was a school board or a bowling league
or their church and all these things that sort of
(20:13):
used to bring people from different walks together have fragmented
or declined in popularity, and there's been this decline of
what we sometimes call the monoculture. And in a lot
of ways, that's probably a good thing, because it means
that people are getting what they want rather than just
getting what happens to be available. But it leads us
in a circumstance where the only thing that still kind
(20:35):
of represents that monoculture, the only thing that can get
twenty five million people to pay attention to the same
thing at the same time, is sports, and it is
the NFL. And it leaves our business in a really
unique position, and I think it gives the NFL more
cultural influence and currency than ever before. And it also
(20:55):
is really powerful to our business partners, our advertisers who
are looking for simultaneous attention, right, how can they reach
the most people at the same time. It really is
nothing else that delivers that simultaneous audience on the scale
of the NFL.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
So in a cord cutting streamer world where I don't
know what streamer this show that everyone's talking about is
on and I've got to find it all, we know
that someday at one pm Eastern, there's going to be
Fox and CBS games kicking off, and that is a
ritualistic thing. And if you go online, if you live online,
which so many people.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Do, the conversation usually circles around.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Whatever's happening on the football field or what the broadcast
is saying about that game.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Right, And you know, I sometimes like to say that
television used to be America's biggest stage, and increasingly it's
become America's biggest library. You know, it's a place that
you can go to anytime and get any TV show
or movie that has ever been made and watch it
at your convenience. And so as you go from that
stage model to a library model where all that on
(22:00):
demand consumption is happening, the thing that still kind of
represents TV as America's biggest stage is sports and news
like those are the only things that you feel like
you have to consume it in real time. If you're
not seeing it as it happens, you're left out of
the social media conversation. You're left out of what we
used to call water water. Now it's like text message dialogue.
(22:21):
You've got to see it as it happens. So as
the rest of the business has become focused on on demand.
I can watch anything I want, anytime I want. Sports
really stands alone as the thing that you're compelled to
see in the moment that it's happening.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, if I want to go binge the West Wing,
I can do that tomorrow. If I want to go
find out what's happening in you know, the Texans Bear
Sunday night game, I have to watch it live. That
makes a lot of sense that that does work out
if you think about the way people consume right now.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It's really why the entertainment business has become so challenging,
right because when you make a new TV show, you're
competing with every TV show that's ever been made. When
we play a football game at one o'clock on a
Sunday afternoon, we're really just competing with other football games
that are on at the same time. So we get
to cot with what's happening in the moment. And on
the scripted side, the entertainment side, they're competing with the
(23:11):
best that the medium has ever delivered. And that's a
really challenging circumstance.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
This is why I love having you, and I never
thought of that, like I could watch any episode of
Friends I want at any time.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
I just have to have the right app if I
want to see what Caleb Williams is doing.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
This week to bounce back from Sunday Night's game, Like,
you have to watch it live and the conversation's over
by the morning, So you really, if you want to
be a part of it, you have to actually sit
and watch it and get through it good insights. So
we've had Mike North on several times on this podcast,
and he is, amongst other things, he works in the
broadcast group at the NFL. He also is part of
(23:48):
the group that creates the schedule, and he's taken us
from the NFL's vantage point on how they pick which
games when and what they weigh in as factors. And
he always talks about how the networks play a key role.
The teams in the clubs, they'll send some things like hey,
we've got a concert this week, we can't have a
home game that week, or we'd really.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Like to be home this week because of X, Y
and Z. And then there's the network side of it,
the media partners who.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Are all paying big checks to have NFL games broadcasted.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
But we've never spoken to someone from.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
The network side of it on how they compile their
preferences and make their lists. You're part of that crew
at Fox who does so. And Fox makes their list,
and NBC makes theirs, and ESPN and now Amazon and CBS,
we all put together, here are the games that we'd
love in our wish list. Can you take us behind
the curtain a little bit? And how you guys decide
which games you request to the NFL be broadcast on Fox?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Sure? So you know, Mike North and his team are
among our closest partners, if not our closest partner. We're
engaged in kind of a never ending conversation with them
about what's working, what we could do in future weeks,
what we want to do next season, like that dialogue
really never ends. In fact, even earlier this morning, we
(25:05):
were already texting about things that might be in play
for a future week this season. So that's a very
very close relationship. And what we do and what all
the networks do, is we do submit a list of
our top fifty games for the upcoming season, usually fifty games,
and we submitt that usually after the NFC Championship game
(25:28):
and before the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Of the previous year, right before free.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Agency, before the draft, you're like, we want these two
teams next.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Year, we'll submit that list, will have a pretty in
depth conversation prior to the super Bowl, and then between
the super Bowl and the release of the schedule, there
is just an ongoing conversation about what if we got
this game rather than that game, or what if there
is a major move in free agency, what might that mean?
And that's come up a lot in recent seasons, whether
(25:58):
that's quarterbacks that their retirement is in question or Aaron
Rodgers coming from Green Bay to New York. There's always
some pivotal player whose future is still in question post
Super Bowl, and we have to kind of talk that
through when we put together our top fifty list. You know,
something that's very much on our mind is that this
(26:18):
is still primarily an NFC package, Right So we know
that we're going to have at least eight Dallas Cowboys
games every year. We know we're probably only going to
have one Kansas City Chiefs game, So for us to
put seven Chiefs games in our top ten doesn't make
a lot of sense, right, Like, we kind of have
to take into account that we're mostly going to showcase
(26:40):
NFC teams, NFC brands. So we'll put a couple of
Kansas City games in our top ten that we really
really want, but we'll focus the top end of our
list more on that collection of eight or nine Dallas
games this year, it's nine some years, it'll be eight
that we know we are going to get, just per
the terms of our contract. So it's not necessarily a
(27:02):
totally straightforward ranking of these are the top fifty games
in exactly our order of preference. It's informed a little
bit by the fact that, you know, we do want
to acknowledge that we need to fire one really big
shot with the Chiefs, and we know that we're going
to have a deeper pool of Dallas, and so we
tend to have just a little bit more NFC and
(27:23):
a little bit more Dallas at the top of our ranking.
And then the league takes our list, and they take
lists from all the networks, and they have that incredibly
challenging job of trying to serve the interest of all
these partners. You know, what Mike's team has to do
is they have to try to satisfy the biggest media
companies in the world, who are collectively paying over ten
(27:44):
billion dollars a year to have access to these games,
and it's really really challenging to make sure that everybody's happy,
or at least everybody's equally unhappy, and that's sort of
what Mike and his team have to do. And as
we engage in that conversation with them, we're always really
mindful of the fact that we're not the only partner, right,
Like they have to balance everybody's needs. We have to
(28:06):
sort of acknowledge that we're not the only network that
wants Kansas City San fran We're not the only ones
that want Dallas Philly. Everybody's looking for those games.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah, speaking of Kansas City, San Francisco, that one that's obvious,
that one's going to be Burke, Cart and Brady. But
you know, as we started this week, it's week three.
You know, we came after the Sunday games and I'm
looking at the schedule and I'm like, Wow, Fox has
Saints Eagles and Ravens Cowboys. Those are both worthy games
to put on national TV. When do you guys start
(28:35):
having the conversations in picking which broadcast.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Crews are going to which game week to week?
Speaker 3 (28:42):
So we will do a preliminary map for the first say,
third to half first half of the season before any
games are played, so we've got an early read even
before any games kickoff. And then as we go through
the season, we'll do a map two weeks in advance
of every game, and then we'll do a final map
(29:02):
one week out. And then even after that final map,
our affiliates around the country have an opportunity to come
back to us and say, hey, you assigned us Green Bay, Tennessee,
and what we actually want is Philly, New Orleans. So
the stations have a role to play there. The league
has a lot of input that they give us, and
we adjust the maps on a rolling basis throughout the year.
(29:25):
And it's not my job to assign a crew to
each game. That happens within the production unit, but we
do start having conversations about that in some cases three
or four weeks out, and it changes all the time, right,
It's very fluid. Sometimes we think that the Burkhart Brady
Aaron Rinaldy crew is going to go to a certain game,
(29:47):
and then the next two weeks of results are so
different from what we expected that we have to very
quickly move them to something else. So that's not uncommon
at all. And even though that choice doesn't really sit
with my team, we're talking with production all the time
about how we think the maps are going to ligh
out and what right game for a certain crew might be.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Can I go back and get behind the curtain to
giving Dallas Cleveland our Week one game for Fox? And
I say hour as an employee with Fox, I think
there was a bunch of games on and you guys
put Brady and Burker. Obviously Dallas is the big draw,
but Cleveland out of the gates, and of course they
disappointed us and not putting up a fight. But in hindsight,
it's like, Okay, there was a lot of science behind
(30:30):
that decision. Does Cleveland rate well nationally? Is that kind
of the reason behind that because Brady didn't really have
any connection to the Browns.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yeah. I think there are some teams that are a
little bit more popular nationally than they're on the field
performance might suggest, and there are some that are not
as popular nationally as they're on field performance might lead
you to believe Cleveland is one of those teams that
they're coming from a relatively big market. They obviously have
(30:57):
a lot of history, They have a very passionate fan base,
Their local ratings are always among the biggest in the country,
and there's a lot of migration and in a lot
of migration over the last say fifty years from the
Rust Belt through to the sun Belt, right interesting. So
when you're looking at those AFC North and NFC North markets.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
National teams interesting.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Punch above their weight nationally because not only do they
do a big number in their local market, but there
are a lot of former Pittsburghers in the sun Belt.
There are a lot of former Clevelanders, a lot of
people from Detroit who have moved elsewhere in the country,
and so those northern teams they tend to do a
little better than you might think because a lot of
their fans have just gone to other parts of the country.
(31:40):
I was really happy to have that Dallas Cleveland game
for Week one. Wish it had been more competitive. I mean,
that game opened as the betting line on that game
opened as a pick, and obviously it ended up tilting
very much in one direction, so it could have been
a more competitive game. But definitely no complaints about starting
the year with the Browns fan base.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
And the ratings were incredible, So your science and you're
backing behind that worked out.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Look. We had John or Ran on.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Before the season started just to kind of give a
big picture thought about the way the broadcast is going.
You know, he's one of the leaders in the space
as far as journalism goes with sports media. He had
a take that he thought ratings might take a real
dip because there's going to be such a fervor around
the election. We're two weeks in and that hasn't necessarily
been the case. What's your read on it as we
head closer to November.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, honestly, my read on it is that former President
Trump has dominated the news cycle and dominated the headlines
for nine years like no other person in our lifetime
ever has. And the result of that is that I
think everybody in the country pretty much has their mind
(32:50):
made up about one of the major candidates in this election,
and there's nothing that's going to happen that is going
to move his supporters off of him, and there's nothing
that's going to happen that's going to persuade his detractors
that they actually like him. So everybody's mind is made
up about one of the candidates there's just not that
much persuasion to be done, and the news stories from
(33:14):
the campaign aren't hitting in the same way. And what
we're seeing in cable news ratings is that, yeah, they're
up a little bit over last year, but if we
compare them to the last two presidential years, Sunday afternoon
news ratings are down versus twenty twenty. They're down even
by a little bit more versus twenty sixteen. The campaign
just isn't having the same impact that it did four
(33:36):
eight years ago. And I think what we're going to
see for the next seven weeks, honestly, is that Fox
and every other network that's heavily invested in football is
going to make a ton of money selling political advertising
without the downside of any negative impact to our viewership.
So I think it's all upside for us on the
advertising side, and we're not really seeing any negative impact
(33:58):
to the viewership.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Dude, fascinating.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
So I have a friend who works in local syndication sales,
and he said the greatest thing that happened to them
was buy In dropping out and Kamala entering the fray,
because suddenly there was a whole new host of ads
that they can run and they're going to sell all
these different ads, so you don't think of those things
that you're just a consumer of television.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah, it's amazing, you know. On the collegiate side, we
made a decision this year to draft the number one
game in the Big Ten on November two, so that's
three days before the presidential election, and when the time comes,
we'll be able to choose between Ohio State, Penn State,
or Oregon Michigan. We used a very high draft pick,
(34:39):
so the Big Ten games are assigned via a draft
rather than the conference asign.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Also very cool to picture. Is that televised? Why is
it not?
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Yeah, that's a fun process. Probably not as good of
a TV product because you might think, but it is
a fun thing to participate in. A big reason that
we took that date as high as we did was
because of the election and because of the campaign money
that's going to be flowing into our business in the
days leading up to election day. You know, we wanted
(35:07):
to make sure that we had an opportunity to not
just have a great game, but have Penn State coming
from probably the decisive state in this election, just a
couple of days before everybody goes to the polls, so
those campaign considerations do play a part in us deciding
what games we really want to have.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
So interesting, So a couple of years ago we had
the Arrabias. Last year we had the craziest Thanksgiving slate
you could imagine. We had a great game on Thursday,
we had Ohio State Michigan. On Saturday, we had an
incredible game on Sunday. What's this year's Thanksgiving weekend looking like?
Speaker 2 (35:44):
On Fox?
Speaker 3 (35:45):
So the Thanksgiving game is Giants Dallas, which we had
that game two years ago and it did forty two
million viewers to the most watched NFL regular season game
in history. Not sure the Giants are going to be
as strong by Thanksgiving this year as they were two
years ago, but that's kind of a bulletproof window, right,
no matter what the matchup is. The Thanksgiving game Troit
(36:06):
game more now than ever, and the Dallas game has
always been part of everybody's Thanksgiving celebration, but it's just
a part of the holiday. So you know you're going
to do a gigantic number. You're going to draw in
people who don't necessarily watch the NFL every week, and
you have a high level of confidence that having that
late afternoon game on Thanksgiving is going to be the
(36:27):
most watched game of the entire season. Saturday, we have
Ohio State Michigan. Michigan obviously already has one in the
lost column, but because we've now gone to a twelve
team playoff on the collegiate side, I think that Ohio
State Michigan game is still absolutely very meaningful when we
get to the last weekend of the year. We just
now have opened up Friday nights for college football on Fox.
(36:49):
We had a good premiere last week. I think we're
going to be even a little bit better this coming Friday.
And when we get to Thanksgiving weekend, we're going to
have Utah in the Friday night window. That's a game
that I think will either be to lock up a
playoff spot or potentially Utah look to put themselves in
position for a buy in the playoffs. So we like
(37:11):
what we have for Friday. And then the doubleheader that
Sunday sits with CBS, so they'll probably have there's no
probably about it. They certainly will have a bigger audience
on Thanksgiving Sunday than we will. But we have Seattle
Jets as probably our League game for the single header,
so it's a great four days of football. And I
think what we like is that in opening up that
(37:33):
Friday night and using it now as a college football
showcase window, we want to try to create circumstances where
football just takes over television five nights a week. Right,
the Amazon game is always going to be the most
watch show on Thursdays. We want our Friday night college
game to regularly win Friday nights, Saturday and Sunday are
(37:54):
taken over by football as they always have been, and
then Disney's going to control Monday Night. And we want
to give fans an opportunity to just be completely immersed
in football five days a week, all through the fall.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
And we are.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
And I've got a couple last question. This is actually
an incredible interview, and I think it's just like behind
the curtain for so many diehard NFL fans who obsess
over which broadcasters are calling their games, what channel is
it going to be on, and when is the game
and it's like, oh, there's there's a math and a
science behind all this. Last week it was the only
time this week. We're gonna this season, We're gonna get
(38:28):
this and Scott Hansen at Red Zone was having a
field day with the Decca Box. But there was ten
different games in that early window, and there were fans
of it who loved it.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
To me, as a.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Consumer, it was too much like I like to spread
them out a little bit as a network.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Is there an advantage to that a disadvantage of that?
Speaker 1 (38:45):
And I know CBS had that four o'clock window, really
and we had a couple of games on Fox unfortunately
the Rams and Cardinals was a blowout.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
But like, what do you view it as.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
As as someone who's an executive who looks at this
stuff for a living.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
We love it. I wish it was like that every week?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Talk about it?
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Why?
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Why?
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Okay? So the reason we love it is that the
number of fans that are watching via Sunday Ticket or
via red Zone or Game Day on NFL network, that's
a relatively small number of people right probably fewer than
ten percent of all viewers are watching in one of
those ways. For the most part, people are just turning
(39:23):
on their local Fox affiliate, their local CBS affiliate. They're
watching the NFL in the same way that they did
thirty or forty years ago. That's the majority of our audience.
So if mostly they're going to be watching on their
local TV stations, we kind of want to set up
a model where, for the most part, people are going
(39:43):
to get their local team at one o'clock, and then
they're going to get a big game at four twenty
five on either Fox or CBS. This week it was
Cincinnati Kansas City, and then the whole country gets a
special game in primetime on NBC. If you can have
that progression of local game it's a big four to
twenty five game to big primetime game, that's probably the
(40:04):
best model for the average viewer that's watching on a
traditional TV station. If you take some of those ten
one pm games and push them into the late window,
all that means is that you've got fewer markets that
are able to see Joe Burrow against Patrick Mahomes at
four twenty five, right, So we don't want to minimize
(40:25):
the number of people that can see the big four
to twenty five game. If my favorite team is playing
in the league window and I don't get to see Mahomes,
that means I'm probably getting a game at one o'clock
that I don't care as much about as I care
about Burrow versus mahomes, So you're just trying to maximize
the number of markets where you can go. Twenty local
teams are playing at one, We're going to get a
(40:47):
matchup of premium brands and marquee quarterbacks at four twenty five,
and then you're going to have the whole country focused
on the NBC game in primetime. That's kind of the
way that we like to see a play out.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
And it's only one time though this whole season. Now
there's gonna be bie weeks and all this stuff. Is
that something where the networks go to the league office
and say, hey, more of than or is that something
you guys just sit on your hands and you're just
you take what you're giving.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
There's not that much we can do about it, right Like,
everybody's got to have a bye week. I mean, there's
obviously a player safety consideration in that. So there's nothing
we can do about the bye weeks. And the league
has just evolved in such a way that a game
is now going to Thursday night every week. Sometimes two
games are going to Monday night. The inventory that's available
to Sunday afternoon just isn't as much as it used
(41:32):
to be, so it's pretty rare. As you just said it,
there's only one time this season that we have this
many games at one o'clock. And it's just kind of
a byproduct of the league taking more games from Sunday
and putting them on Thursday, putting them on Monday, putting
them in Europe, putting them in Brazil. Right Like, there
are just more mouths to feed, and it lessens our
ability to have that many games at one o'clock on
(41:54):
a Sunday.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
My last question, there's always is like things that pop
up on Instagram and it's like the Cowboys are Forbes is,
you know, wealthiest franchise And there was one that came
up and I don't know this source. I wish I
had it, but it was like mahomes Kelsey read Swift,
the Chiefs have overtaken the Cowboys as like the most
desired or most watched team or the most hated teams
(42:18):
something like that.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Let's put Cowboys in Chiefs in one tier.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
As a network executive and as a network one of
those next tier franchises that garner the biggest audience or
Google search trends that you've been analyzing, and it doesn't
have to be one team that's saying, hey, there's a
number three. What's that next tier of just big brand
franchises that really touch the entire country.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Yeah, I would say right now, the second tier is
San Francisco, Okay, Green Bay and Pittsburgh, right intro teams
with long histories, with very very well established brands, Teams
that win more than they lose. You know, Pittsburgh, it's
been a while since they made a deep playoff run,
(43:01):
but they still win more games than they lose basically
every season. San Francisco has been knocking on the door
of a championship for a while. Green Bays had success
basically for as long as I've been in this job.
So it's you know, passionate fan base, long history of success,
and current success, even if that current success isn't necessarily
(43:21):
at the super Bowl level, but at least at a
level of being competitive every week and then on that
top level, as you say, it's Dallas and Kansas City
have really separated themselves from everybody else thinking about this
on the way in today. Actually, I don't think there's
been a team that has as much charisma and personality
and appeal to casual fans as the Chiefs, probably since
(43:42):
the eighty five Bears. I don't know if you think
of one that's had more cultural impacts since then. But
the difference between the eighty five Bears and the Chiefs
is that the eighty five Bears blue teams out every
week and the Chiefs don't do anything but play one possession.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Games, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
And so the difference between the Cowboys and the Chiefs
right now is that Cowboys have been playing a lot
of lopsided games both last season in the first two
weeks of this year, and the Chiefs it seems like
every time they play it came back, it comes down
to a last possession.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
I think the term i'd use for the Chiefs is
cultural zeitgeist.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
There's like four quadrants.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
There's man, there's woman, there's old, there's young, and then
there's everything you could even talk you know, the Taylor
Swift element, yes, but there's also like the hardcore football them.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Chasing history with this three peet.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
I think they hit every piece of the grid, and
then to your point, they play in these.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Incredibly dramatic, nail bier games.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
They hit everything, and they're also darn fun to watch
because they seem like they love playing the sport and
they love each other.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
I don't know if there's a team that's had.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
So much fun playing football and been so much fun
to watch over the last three four decades. And the
sixties Packers predate me, and the seventies Steelers predate me.
But you're right, I think eighty five Bears with the
Fridge and McMahon like, I don't know the early nineties Cowboys,
but that was even just a little window of a
couple of years, you know.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
Yeah, I just wish that when they played those games
on CBS at four twenty five, that they blast teams out.
I'd like to see them win some games by thirty
on the other network.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Let's go, dude. I appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
If there's any other comments you'd like to make, now
is your time, because I feel like we have a
different audience than are usual in the ratings bubble audience
that we might have anything else you'd want to share
as far as insights, key learnings, takeaways, or things you
would watch if you're a fan of the game and
you haven't looked at it from that analytical vantage point yet.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
No, not really I mean, I think we covered a
lot of ground. I don't expect the average football fan
to care about ratings or TV viewership, right. It's only
interesting to a small percentage of football fans, right, And
I get that. I think what we want people to
understand is that the reason the numbers are as powerful
as they are is because of what we talked about earlier,
(45:50):
that the NFL really does bring people together. It offers
a kind of social cohesion and connectivity that nothing else does,
and that's incredibly valuable. And as a company that tries
to be a steward of the product, I think all
of us that try to be stewards of not just
the NFL but all the sports that we do, we
really have to be mindful of the idea that what
(46:11):
makes this whole business work is that we're providing something
that brings people together and helps people have meaningful connections
and experiences at a time when those connections are harder
and harder to come by. So I think, you know,
we have to think about the game on the field,
we have to think about player safety. There are so
many things that we have to have top of mind.
(46:32):
But I think at the very top of our mind
has to be the fact that what underlies this whole
business is the ability of sports to bring people together
and provide connections that matter and give us shared experiences
when there are fewer and fewer of them to be had.
And as long as we sort of have that at
the forefront of our thinking, I think we're just going
(46:53):
to continue to be successful.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
Dude, Can I tell you something like just hearing you
talk that way and what sports brings and this communal feel. Now,
I go on NFL Network every morning, but those Sundays
on Fox at eleven a m. And I step on
there Eastern and I'm with Edelman, and I'm with Vic
and Carissa and I'm with Woodson, and it's like we
feel like we're doing TV for each other and we're
(47:14):
having fun. And Fox lets us do that, which is great.
But the amount of feedback you get from people who
aren't necessarily tweeting or live reporting on every word that said,
like that just watch it because it's comforting. Like I
think there's something really to that, and I love the
fact that you embrace that, and I think you're right
on Sundays, not that this is replacing any you know,
(47:35):
spiritual or faith based thing, but there is a communal
feeling that we get on Sundays watching the NFL that
I don't think we get many other places in society today.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
We don't get it in any other places, and so
that's what we have to preserve. And you guys get
to tee it up every Sunday. You're the first voices
that a lot of people hear when they come to
the NFL on Sunday, so it's an important way to
kick off the day.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Mike. I appreciate you taking the time. You're a busy man.
This was awesome. We're gonna have you on again.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
I so appreciate it and enjoy that beautiful Los Angeles weather,
my man.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Thanks enjoy Brooklyn. We miss it there and happy to
come back anytime. Love to do it again. Thanks for
having me on.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
You're the best.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Mike mulva Hill a purely brilliant, beautiful mind when it
comes to this stuff. He's the president of Insights and
Analytics at Fox Sports.
Speaker 4 (48:22):
Guys, more to come on the season After this, I
thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
Mike moulva Hill a great guest, a great colleague at Fox.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Gosh.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
I got emotional at the end. I got like goosebumps
him talking about like the congregation of football and we all,
we all have this one central piece to our weekends,
and it is watching the NFL.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
And right on, dude, right.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
On, it's time for delivering results. Presented by Uber Eats.
Each week, I present a team or a player I
believe deserved the award for delivering results.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
And the player that I would like to shout out
this week is Raiders rookie brock Bowers. Yeah, brock Bowers talk.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Brock Bowers leads all tight ends in the NFL through
two weeks in targets, catches, and and yards.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
And he is a rookie. He's right out of the gates.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
Is it presumptive or too soon for me to say
he's already one of the best tight ends in football.
Probably there's a good group there and that tight end
university every year. But gosh, was brock Bauer's dominant in
that game against the Ravens. Nine catches, ninety eight yards
on nine targets. Every time Minshoot throw them the ball,
he caught the ball and the Raiders came way back
(49:51):
from ten points in the fourth quarter to beat a
team that was playing in the AFC Championship Game a
year ago in their building. Brock Bowers delivered, and he's
delivered through two weeks, and that was delivering results presented
by Uber Eats, where you can get almost almost anything
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(50:13):
almost anything for a game day. A lot of giorate
games up ahead in week three. We've got Saints versus Eagles.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I love that one.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
We've got Cowboys versus Ravens. I love that one. And
you got a sneaky Sunday night interesting one with now
the suddenly resurgent Falcons playing the Chiefs in Atlanta. Bunch
of good games, bunch of good action, and we'll have
a bunch of good conversations about it next week. Let's
get after it, guys. Thanks for listening to this week's
(50:42):
episode of the Season.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
With Peter Shrake.
Speaker 1 (51:03):
The Season with Peter Schrager is a production of the
NFL in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.
The Season with Peter Schrager is a production of the
NFL in partnership with iHeartRadio. What's Up, Everybody, Welcome to
the Season with Peter Schrager, our week three edition of
(00:27):
the regular season.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Twenty twenty four. Got a really cool.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Guest up ahead, Mike moulva Hill, who is the president
of Insights and Analytics.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
At Fox Sports.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I've grown to really love Mike and his insights over
the last several years of getting to know him. He's
a really cool guy, big horse racing fan. We're not
going to get into that. We're going to talk more
about behind the curtain of what you are seeing on
television every single week and how decisions are made as
far as which games go where, when they are placed,
(00:58):
which broadcast crew is calling each game, and Mike gives
us some really really interesting takes on football as a
whole that's come up in a second. I wanted to
start the podcast though, talking about young quarterbacks, their feelings,
their emotions, our feelings towards them. Why do I say
that two interesting things happened on Sunday that it becomes
(01:23):
rele towards our approach to talking about young quarterbacks and
the way young quarterbacks develop, and the first one of
them was Bryce Young being absolutely brutal again in a
terrible loss to the Chargers that was seen by about
one percent of the country Chargers fans, Panthers fans, and
nobody else because it was a game he couldn't watch.
(01:44):
It was horrible quarterback play from Bryce Young and horrible
offense from the Carolina Panthers for the second straight week,
and if you're going back to last year, really for
the eighteenth or nineteenth straight week. And you know, the
news came out on early Tuesday morning that Bryce Young
(02:04):
was being benched, and I think our initial reactions was like,
how the hell can you bench him?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
This was a first overall pick, And in fact.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I've done the research, he is the only first overall
pick to be benched within the first two weeks of
his second season. If he was starting in week two,
it sounds like it's in the weeds. But basically it's like,
this doesn't happen. It's unprecedented in a sophomore season. You
become the starter if you're a number one overall pick
(02:31):
and you're given the reins and let's go.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
They put in Andy Dalton and.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
The initial reaction from a lot of people was the
owner is an idiot, the team has failed him, They've
done this thing wrong, and how is that beneficial for
anybody putting in Andy freaking Dalton. And my take is this,
You've got fifty two other people in that locker room,
and fifty two other men who play professional sports and
(02:56):
have their own stories, and a lot of.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Them are veterans.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
I'm looking at Jadavian Clowney, I'm looking at Derek Brown,
one of the great defensive tackles in this league, and
they're at practice every day. And it does not benefit
Dave Canalis, the head coach.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
In any way to.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Do this unless it's the only way to be competitive
and it's the only way to keep the trust of
that veteran locker room. I would have to imagine that
Andy Dalton is out playing Bryce Young every single day
in practice. I would have to imagine that the rest
of the veterans in that locker room and the other
(03:32):
young players too, are looking at this and saying, we
cannot compete with that guy. And if you're a fan
of the team, the products has been so bad over
the last two seasons that this drastic measure has to
be taken if it gives them even a slightly more
competitive chance on Sundays. Maybe it blows up in the face,
(03:52):
maybe the Raiders win forty two to nothing this weekend
against the Carolina Panthers. But I could assure you David
Tepper does not want to bench Bryce Young. I could
assure you Dave Canalis does not want to bench Bryce Young.
I could assure you Dan Morgan, the general manager, does
not want to bench Bryce Young. And I can show
you Brent Tillis, who is one of the new executives,
there is in no way going into this season saying
(04:13):
I hope we bench Bryce Young in the second week.
This measure is so extreme and is so against the grain,
and is so unpopular that it tells me things are
as bleak as they seem. And they had to do
this to a salvage the season, be salvage the locker room,
(04:36):
and see salvage any chance of even being competitive at
this point. Now, as for Bryce Young's feelings, I don't
know that. It certainly doesn't help him being shelved and
embarrassed in this way, But does it help him being
behind center and losing by twenty thirty points and making
careless mistakes and being under durest because I don't know,
(04:58):
I don't think that helps him either. So he'll take
a step back and he'll watch now if you listen
to this podcast, we had Dave Canalis on the head
coach in July, and his big take with Bryce Young
was that he's gonna love him up and he's gonna
make sure he knows he's loved and he's going to
coach him up and make sure he gets everything he needs.
(05:19):
X's and o's wise. That's what he did, which you
know Smith when he helped resurrect his career in Seattle,
and that's what he did with Baker Mayfield when Baker
was signed to a one year deal for four million
dollars last year. So Canal has spent all summer, all spring,
in the early part of the fall with Bryce Young,
loving him up, coaching him up, and he believes that
(05:41):
his best option is to shelve him and bench him.
That tells me that it had to be done, that
there's a lot more there that we don't know, that
things are even worse than what we see on Sundays.
I am telling you, if you're a coach, who prides
himself on being a quarterback guru and being able to
resurrect anything and being able to get the most out
(06:03):
of someone. To bench that young player in the September
portion of the season tells me that this is an
extreme move that they felt had to be done to
salvage the rest of the team. Remember, it's not just
the quarterback you have to worry about. There are fifty
two other alpha males in that locker room. There's a
(06:23):
fan base in that building, and there is an overall
effort and competitive side of this game that maybe they
felt the best option was to just put.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Out Andy Dalton, who we know what we're getting. Andy's Andy, Like,
you know what you're getting.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
I'm not.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
He's not winning any awards in All Pro Awards. Now.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Look last year Joe Flacco won Comeback Player of the Year.
Maybe Dalton does that. I don't foresee it. I don't
think the Panthers are going to rattle off seven wins
or anything. But I do think it tells you something,
and it's not just immediately how stupid everyone is. These
are smart people and they see it every single day
and they see what a lot of us didn't because
(07:01):
we didn't watch it on Sunday on tape on Monday morning.
I'm not a fan of the decision. I would have
love to have seen Bryce thrive this year because I
think he's a great kid and who knows, maybe he's
got a bright future ahead of him. But for the
Panthers to make that decision, it wasn't a popular one
and it certainly wasn't one that they desired. It tells
me that they had to. The other young quarterback that
(07:21):
I would focus on is Will Levis. So Levis is
coming into his first time full time starting season and
there's a lot of hype around him.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Here.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
He had this great win on Thursday Night against the
Dolphins last year, and he's this alpha male, same type
of deal Bro's bro Whole deal made a knucklehead play
in Week one, and then in week two, they're playing
the Jets and they're winning and they're marching and they're
they're looking to put a field goal up to go
up ten nothing on the Jets.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
And get a win.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Here he throws another bone headed interception or a bone
headed turnover, and on camera, Brian Callahan is caught saying,
what the bleep are you doing? And screaming at Levis,
they would go on to lose, and instead of us
as a media as a whole talking on Monday morning
about what happened to the Titans, how did they let
(08:09):
Brayleen Allen run through him? How did they let Breese
Hall catch that pass? Or even better, like, let's talk
about the positives of what Will Levis did a deep
pass to Calvin. All anyone wanted to focus on was
Will Levis's feelings and Brian Callahan being caught, you know,
trashing him, calling him a you know, what the blank
are you doing on camera? And Ryan Fitzpatrick, who I
(08:31):
think I respect as much as any X quarterback in
the league, as he played for everyone, He's seen it all.
He had thoughts on social media, didn't like it, didn't
like how we were treating the young quarterbacks, like what
are we doing here?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
My take?
Speaker 1 (08:45):
And I would talk to FITZI about it, like it was.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
A moment Callahan lost his cool.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
He too is a quarterback guru, was hired to nourish
and build up Will Levis, and in that moment, I
think he was really frustrated. And I would say, yeah,
that was his reaction, and it was caught on camera,
what the blank are you doing?
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Because I could assure you he likely.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Spent a lot of time during the week saying you
cannot kill us with plays like this, and showed the
one from.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Week one over and over and over again.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
And sure enough, as clear as the day is long,
he does it again, and Brian's reaction was a visceral
one of.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
What are you doing? Come on, You're better than that.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
He would later come out and say he's got to
be smarter about thinking about what's on camera, but he
does not regret his reaction and his feelings to that reaction. Again,
we are quick to bash the coach, bash the adult,
and say, let's treat these kids with kids glove. Will
Levis is it adult himself, and he is the quarterback
(09:54):
of an NFL team. I think Will Levis would tell you,
although he doesn't love being shown up by his coach,
he's got to be better than that and he shouldn't
do that. It's interesting how we talk about these young
quarterbacks because I think in the same breath that we
want to throw out that Ryan Leaves a bust and
JaMarcus Russell was a bust, and this guy was a
Buss and yet in twenty twenty four, I think we're
(10:15):
a lot more sensitive to these quarterbacks, and maybe in
some cases we shouldn't be. Maybe Bryce Young had to
be benched, maybe Will Levis had to be yelled at.
And that is my sermon on this beautiful Wednesday morning.
Our guest is Mike Moulva Hill. I had talked about
him already. I think you're really going to enjoy this.
Let's get to the interview from the season with Peter.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Schrager with no further ado.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
One of the smartest men in sports television and a
guy who's insights I not only read week to week
on his Twitter feed, but I also seek out proactively
because we're colleagues at Fox Sports. I think he's one
of the most brilliant guys in our industry, and he's
a great dude.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
His name is Mike Mulva Hill.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
He's the president of Insights and Analytics at Fox Sports,
and I am thrilled to have him on the season
with Peter Schreeger. Mike, good afternoon from your old home,
New York City.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me on.
We've been talking about doing this for a while, and
I'm excited to get into it with you. I got
an extra ice coffee with me today to try to
keep up with your energy level. We'll see how that goes.
But yeah, I see you've got one too, and just
anxious to dive in and talk about what we're seeing
so far this season, all.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Right before we start your job, because I think a
lot of people see what you tweet and it holds
a lot of weight.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
And then you speak at these conferences.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
But like your job, if you were to give an
elevator's speech to a college student who you meet and say, well,
you've got a really cool title, you work at a
really cool company.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
What is your job exactly? What would you say you'd
do at Fox Sports.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
I think a lot of people wonder what exactly I
do at Fox Sports, so I will try to explain it.
I think the elevator pitches. I use every source of
data that's availed to us, which often means Nielsen TV ratings,
to come up with strategies that will grow our audience,
get more people watching games on Fox, and hopefully just
make us a more efficient company.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Okay, And in that purview, you deal with not just NFL,
but you're talking women's volleyball, and you're talking college hockey
and whatever we have on FS one in the middle
of May, like you're overseeing all of it as far
as giving your insights and your analytics to the executives
who make those programming decisions.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Yeah, trying to write. I do that for both the
sports side and the entertainment side. We try to act
as almost an advocate for the audience and an advocate
for sports fans. Right the fans are telling us every
day with their remote controls what they like and what
they don't like about what we're putting on the air.
We try to listen to that via the ratings, and then,
as you say, communicate to the most senior people in
(12:59):
the company what's working, what isn't, what we think could
be working better. And we work with our league partners
at the NFL, collegiate conferences, Major League Baseball, and all
our other content partners to just try to come up
with the smartest way to grow the popularity of their events.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Okay, so ten years ago you'd go by Nielsen ratings,
which might be archaic. Now, what types of tools do
you have and which types of metrics do you guys
use now in a twenty twenty four landscape.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Well, we still use the Nielsen ratings very heavily. We
rely on that data a lot. It's probably the most
important source that we have because it's still the currency
of our business, right like, all of our advertising is
bought and sold based on the data that we get
from Nielsen. But we're also looking at other sources. Lately,
we've become really focused on using Google Search trends, right Like,
(13:48):
we can look at Google Search activity city by city,
team by team, athlete by athlete and try to get
a very real time read on what fans are most
interested in. So when we sit down and do our
NFL map every week and figure out what game is
going to go into every market in the country, a
lot of cases we're looking at Google activity in a
(14:09):
particular city just to see if one team or one
game is popping over another game. And because that Google
data is so real time, it's so immediate and current,
we're probably actually leaning on that more than we're leaning
on our ratings history. Google has become a really important
source of information for us that's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So you'll see what people are searching online Is that
how they do it or is it they have a
more comprehensive algorithm.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
No, it's really just as simple as what are people
searching for on a market by market basis, and Google,
to their credit, makes that data freely accessible to anybody
that takes the time to look at it. So we're
looking at that not just for guidance in our sports decisions,
but we're trying to use it as a measure of
awareness of entertainment programming. We use it to try to
(14:58):
measure interest in current news events, whether that's the campaign
or the conventions, the debates. It's a really good real
time measure of what people are actually interested in right now.
And as I say, it's become a key source of
information for us.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
So I would imagine Google is very very active on
Gordon Ramsey, Joel McHale, Rob Low and cooking shows.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Are we in? Does that sound accurate or No?
Speaker 3 (15:25):
That's right, and we charged job to get even more
active on those terms.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Right, big fan of it, and I'm excited for the
McHale show that's coming out.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
The crime what is the crime scene Kitchen? I saw
the bit he did with Edelman this week and I'm like, Yep,
I'm in. I love it big.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Joel Mcheal guy, we love that. Please keep promoting Fox
entertainment shows on this podcast. We encourage that.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
We will do that. We will do that.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
I don't have much history with Chicago Fire or the
NBC shows. I am a Fox guy through and through,
and I rock with the masked singer as you know.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
All right, let's get into football. It's very early on.
We're just two.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Weeks in, but every year is different as far as trends,
as far as what we're seeing. What are some takeaways
audience wise, just two weeks into this current NFL season.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Yeah, Look, I think that the primary takeaway is that
the league has come back at least as strong as ever,
if not stronger than ever. And we hear a lot
about changes in our business and the fact that people
are cutting the cord, maybe getting out of their cable packages,
moving more of their viewership to streaming platforms, and all
(16:33):
of that is real. And yet even as people move
out of their traditional cable bundles, the audiences for the
NFL and for college football just continue to grow. The
resilience of those properties is pretty remarkable. So we're two
weeks into the season, the average audience for all NFL games,
not just on Fox but across every carrier is up
(16:55):
eight percent. The audience share that we're seeing is amazing.
You know, if you look at all games, all networks,
the average share of men ageat into thirty four that
are watching a typical NFL game is sixty six percent.
So sixty six percent of all the young men that
are watching TV at any particular time are watching an
(17:18):
NFL game. Maybe even more amazing, the share of women
eighteen to thirty four for a typical NFL game is
a fifty. So while we think of the of the
NFL and we think of football as being a traditional
male vehicle, that female audience becomes more important to us
all the time. I think if you go through television history,
you're just not going to find that many shows that
(17:39):
are doing a sixty six share or a fifty share.
You really have to go back to, you have to
go back decades to things like I Love Lucy Max Shard,
Theater Mash, you know, shows that just come from a
different era of media consumption. That's the stranglehold that the
NFL has on the audience. And yes, we're only two
weeks in, but it just shows no signs of slowing
(18:03):
down or reversing. I think the degree to which the
NFL bell sort of towers over everything else on the
TV landscape just becomes greater and greater each year.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, there's that stat we get every end of the season.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
It's like or at the end of the year.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Like eighty eight of the top one hundred shows or
NFL related like that only gets bigger and bigger, and
the pie, if you will, only gets to be gobbled
up more and more by the NFL. Can you can
you share us with some of those analytics and metrics
historically over I guess the last calendar year of just
how dominant football is and then NFL. Yes, But then
(18:39):
when you add in college football, I think that gets
an even bigger share of the top one hundred shows.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Yeah, you know. There are a lot of ways that
we can parse the data to try to make that
argument about the power of live sports. But I think
one that tends to be really understandable to people and
gets a lot of pickup in the press is that
look at the hundred most watch shows of any given year,
and so last year, ninety three of the hundred. Most
(19:05):
watch shows on television were live sports events, and the
vast majority of those were NFL games. In fact, it
may even be the ninety three were NFL games and
a few more were other sports events. So if you
were to go back twenty or thirty years, that number
of the top hundred that comes from live sports, it
used to be like twenty of one hundred. Right now
(19:27):
it's virtually everything. And I think that has to do
with the fragmentation of the entertainment audience, the fact that
some of that entertain entertainment audience has gone to streaming,
and I think there's something going on there where sports
and especially the NFL has become really the only thing
that still brings people from all walks of life together
(19:51):
in real time. Right Like when I was a kid, Yes,
the NFL did twenty five million viewers a week, but
there were a lot of TV shows that did twenty
million viewers a week, and we all watched the same TV,
We listened to the same music, we saw the same movies.
People were sort of more engaged in community based activities then,
whether it was a school board or a bowling league
or their church and all these things that sort of
(20:13):
used to bring people from different walks together have fragmented
or declined in popularity, and there's been this decline of
what we sometimes call the monoculture. And in a lot
of ways, that's probably a good thing, because it means
that people are getting what they want rather than just
getting what happens to be available. But it leads us
in a circumstance where the only thing that still kind
(20:35):
of represents that monoculture, the only thing that can get
twenty five million people to pay attention to the same
thing at the same time, is sports, and it is
the NFL. And it leaves our business in a really
unique position, and I think it gives the NFL more
cultural influence and currency than ever before. And it also
(20:55):
is really powerful to our business partners, our advertisers who
are looking for simultaneous attention, right, how can they reach
the most people at the same time. It really is
nothing else that delivers that simultaneous audience on the scale
of the NFL.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
So in a cord cutting streamer world where I don't
know what streamer this show that everyone's talking about is
on and I've got to find it all, we know
that someday at one pm Eastern, there's going to be
Fox and CBS games kicking off, and that is a
ritualistic thing. And if you go online, if you live online,
which so many people.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Do, the conversation usually circles around.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Whatever's happening on the football field or what the broadcast
is saying about that game.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Right, And you know, I sometimes like to say that
television used to be America's biggest stage, and increasingly it's
become America's biggest library. You know, it's a place that
you can go to anytime and get any TV show
or movie that has ever been made and watch it
at your convenience. And so as you go from that
stage model to a library model where all that on
(22:00):
demand consumption is happening, the thing that still kind of
represents TV as America's biggest stage is sports and news
like those are the only things that you feel like
you have to consume it in real time. If you're
not seeing it as it happens, you're left out of
the social media conversation. You're left out of what we
used to call water water. Now it's like text message dialogue.
(22:21):
You've got to see it as it happens. So as
the rest of the business has become focused on on demand.
I can watch anything I want, anytime I want. Sports
really stands alone as the thing that you're compelled to
see in the moment that it's happening.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, if I want to go binge the West Wing,
I can do that tomorrow. If I want to go
find out what's happening in you know, the Texans Bear
Sunday night game, I have to watch it live. That
makes a lot of sense that that does work out
if you think about the way people consume right now.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It's really why the entertainment business has become so challenging,
right because when you make a new TV show, you're
competing with every TV show that's ever been made. When
we play a football game at one o'clock on a
Sunday afternoon, we're really just competing with other football games
that are on at the same time. So we get
to cot with what's happening in the moment. And on
the scripted side, the entertainment side, they're competing with the
(23:11):
best that the medium has ever delivered. And that's a
really challenging circumstance.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
This is why I love having you, and I never
thought of that, like I could watch any episode of
Friends I want at any time.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
I just have to have the right app if I
want to see what Caleb Williams is doing.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
This week to bounce back from Sunday Night's game, Like,
you have to watch it live and the conversation's over
by the morning, So you really, if you want to
be a part of it, you have to actually sit
and watch it and get through it good insights. So
we've had Mike North on several times on this podcast,
and he is, amongst other things, he works in the
broadcast group at the NFL. He also is part of
(23:48):
the group that creates the schedule, and he's taken us
from the NFL's vantage point on how they pick which
games when and what they weigh in as factors. And
he always talks about how the networks play a key role.
The teams in the clubs, they'll send some things like hey,
we've got a concert this week, we can't have a
home game that week, or we'd really.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Like to be home this week because of X, Y
and Z. And then there's the network side of it,
the media partners who.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Are all paying big checks to have NFL games broadcasted.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
But we've never spoken to someone from.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
The network side of it on how they compile their
preferences and make their lists. You're part of that crew
at Fox who does so. And Fox makes their list,
and NBC makes theirs, and ESPN and now Amazon and CBS,
we all put together, here are the games that we'd
love in our wish list. Can you take us behind
the curtain a little bit? And how you guys decide
which games you request to the NFL be broadcast on Fox?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Sure? So you know, Mike North and his team are
among our closest partners, if not our closest partner. We're
engaged in kind of a never ending conversation with them
about what's working, what we could do in future weeks,
what we want to do next season, like that dialogue
really never ends. In fact, even earlier this morning, we
(25:05):
were already texting about things that might be in play
for a future week this season. So that's a very
very close relationship. And what we do and what all
the networks do, is we do submit a list of
our top fifty games for the upcoming season, usually fifty games,
and we submitt that usually after the NFC Championship game
(25:28):
and before the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Of the previous year, right before free.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Agency, before the draft, you're like, we want these two
teams next.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Year, we'll submit that list, will have a pretty in
depth conversation prior to the super Bowl, and then between
the super Bowl and the release of the schedule, there
is just an ongoing conversation about what if we got
this game rather than that game, or what if there
is a major move in free agency, what might that mean?
And that's come up a lot in recent seasons, whether
(25:58):
that's quarterbacks that their retirement is in question or Aaron
Rodgers coming from Green Bay to New York. There's always
some pivotal player whose future is still in question post
Super Bowl, and we have to kind of talk that
through when we put together our top fifty list. You know,
something that's very much on our mind is that this
(26:18):
is still primarily an NFC package, Right So we know
that we're going to have at least eight Dallas Cowboys
games every year. We know we're probably only going to
have one Kansas City Chiefs game, So for us to
put seven Chiefs games in our top ten doesn't make
a lot of sense, right, Like, we kind of have
to take into account that we're mostly going to showcase
(26:40):
NFC teams, NFC brands. So we'll put a couple of
Kansas City games in our top ten that we really
really want, but we'll focus the top end of our
list more on that collection of eight or nine Dallas
games this year, it's nine some years, it'll be eight
that we know we are going to get, just per
the terms of our contract. So it's not necessarily a
(27:02):
totally straightforward ranking of these are the top fifty games
in exactly our order of preference. It's informed a little
bit by the fact that, you know, we do want
to acknowledge that we need to fire one really big
shot with the Chiefs, and we know that we're going
to have a deeper pool of Dallas, and so we
tend to have just a little bit more NFC and
(27:23):
a little bit more Dallas at the top of our ranking.
And then the league takes our list, and they take
lists from all the networks, and they have that incredibly
challenging job of trying to serve the interest of all
these partners. You know, what Mike's team has to do
is they have to try to satisfy the biggest media
companies in the world, who are collectively paying over ten
(27:44):
billion dollars a year to have access to these games,
and it's really really challenging to make sure that everybody's happy,
or at least everybody's equally unhappy, and that's sort of
what Mike and his team have to do. And as
we engage in that conversation with them, we're always really
mindful of the fact that we're not the only partner, right,
Like they have to balance everybody's needs. We have to
(28:06):
sort of acknowledge that we're not the only network that
wants Kansas City San fran We're not the only ones
that want Dallas Philly. Everybody's looking for those games.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah, speaking of Kansas City, San Francisco, that one that's obvious,
that one's going to be Burke, Cart and Brady. But
you know, as we started this week, it's week three.
You know, we came after the Sunday games and I'm
looking at the schedule and I'm like, Wow, Fox has
Saints Eagles and Ravens Cowboys. Those are both worthy games
to put on national TV. When do you guys start
(28:35):
having the conversations in picking which broadcast.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Crews are going to which game week to week?
Speaker 3 (28:42):
So we will do a preliminary map for the first say,
third to half first half of the season before any
games are played, so we've got an early read even
before any games kickoff. And then as we go through
the season, we'll do a map two weeks in advance
of every game, and then we'll do a final map
(29:02):
one week out. And then even after that final map,
our affiliates around the country have an opportunity to come
back to us and say, hey, you assigned us Green Bay, Tennessee,
and what we actually want is Philly, New Orleans. So
the stations have a role to play there. The league
has a lot of input that they give us, and
we adjust the maps on a rolling basis throughout the year.
(29:25):
And it's not my job to assign a crew to
each game. That happens within the production unit, but we
do start having conversations about that in some cases three
or four weeks out, and it changes all the time, right,
It's very fluid. Sometimes we think that the Burkhart Brady
Aaron Rinaldy crew is going to go to a certain game,
(29:47):
and then the next two weeks of results are so
different from what we expected that we have to very
quickly move them to something else. So that's not uncommon
at all. And even though that choice doesn't really sit
with my team, we're talking with production all the time
about how we think the maps are going to ligh
out and what right game for a certain crew might be.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Can I go back and get behind the curtain to
giving Dallas Cleveland our Week one game for Fox? And
I say hour as an employee with Fox, I think
there was a bunch of games on and you guys
put Brady and Burker. Obviously Dallas is the big draw,
but Cleveland out of the gates, and of course they
disappointed us and not putting up a fight. But in hindsight,
it's like, Okay, there was a lot of science behind
(30:30):
that decision. Does Cleveland rate well nationally? Is that kind
of the reason behind that because Brady didn't really have
any connection to the Browns.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yeah. I think there are some teams that are a
little bit more popular nationally than they're on the field
performance might suggest, and there are some that are not
as popular nationally as they're on field performance might lead
you to believe Cleveland is one of those teams that
they're coming from a relatively big market. They obviously have
(30:57):
a lot of history, They have a very passionate fan base,
Their local ratings are always among the biggest in the country,
and there's a lot of migration and in a lot
of migration over the last say fifty years from the
Rust Belt through to the sun Belt, right interesting. So
when you're looking at those AFC North and NFC North markets.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
National teams interesting.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Punch above their weight nationally because not only do they
do a big number in their local market, but there
are a lot of former Pittsburghers in the sun Belt.
There are a lot of former Clevelanders, a lot of
people from Detroit who have moved elsewhere in the country,
and so those northern teams they tend to do a
little better than you might think because a lot of
their fans have just gone to other parts of the country.
(31:40):
I was really happy to have that Dallas Cleveland game
for Week one. Wish it had been more competitive. I mean,
that game opened as the betting line on that game
opened as a pick, and obviously it ended up tilting
very much in one direction, so it could have been
a more competitive game. But definitely no complaints about starting
the year with the Browns fan base.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
And the ratings were incredible, So your science and you're
backing behind that worked out.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Look. We had John or Ran on.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Before the season started just to kind of give a
big picture thought about the way the broadcast is going.
You know, he's one of the leaders in the space
as far as journalism goes with sports media. He had
a take that he thought ratings might take a real
dip because there's going to be such a fervor around
the election. We're two weeks in and that hasn't necessarily
been the case. What's your read on it as we
head closer to November.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, honestly, my read on it is that former President
Trump has dominated the news cycle and dominated the headlines
for nine years like no other person in our lifetime
ever has. And the result of that is that I
think everybody in the country pretty much has their mind
(32:50):
made up about one of the major candidates in this election,
and there's nothing that's going to happen that is going
to move his supporters off of him, and there's nothing
that's going to happen that's going to persuade his detractors
that they actually like him. So everybody's mind is made
up about one of the candidates there's just not that
much persuasion to be done, and the news stories from
(33:14):
the campaign aren't hitting in the same way. And what
we're seeing in cable news ratings is that, yeah, they're
up a little bit over last year, but if we
compare them to the last two presidential years, Sunday afternoon
news ratings are down versus twenty twenty. They're down even
by a little bit more versus twenty sixteen. The campaign
just isn't having the same impact that it did four
(33:36):
eight years ago. And I think what we're going to
see for the next seven weeks, honestly, is that Fox
and every other network that's heavily invested in football is
going to make a ton of money selling political advertising
without the downside of any negative impact to our viewership.
So I think it's all upside for us on the
advertising side, and we're not really seeing any negative impact
(33:58):
to the viewership.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Dude, fascinating.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
So I have a friend who works in local syndication sales,
and he said the greatest thing that happened to them
was buy In dropping out and Kamala entering the fray,
because suddenly there was a whole new host of ads
that they can run and they're going to sell all
these different ads, so you don't think of those things
that you're just a consumer of television.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah, it's amazing, you know. On the collegiate side, we
made a decision this year to draft the number one
game in the Big Ten on November two, so that's
three days before the presidential election, and when the time comes,
we'll be able to choose between Ohio State, Penn State,
or Oregon Michigan. We used a very high draft pick,
(34:39):
so the Big Ten games are assigned via a draft
rather than the conference asign.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Also very cool to picture. Is that televised? Why is
it not?
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Yeah, that's a fun process. Probably not as good of
a TV product because you might think, but it is
a fun thing to participate in. A big reason that
we took that date as high as we did was
because of the election and because of the campaign money
that's going to be flowing into our business in the
days leading up to election day. You know, we wanted
(35:07):
to make sure that we had an opportunity to not
just have a great game, but have Penn State coming
from probably the decisive state in this election, just a
couple of days before everybody goes to the polls, so
those campaign considerations do play a part in us deciding
what games we really want to have.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
So interesting, So a couple of years ago we had
the Arrabias. Last year we had the craziest Thanksgiving slate
you could imagine. We had a great game on Thursday,
we had Ohio State Michigan. On Saturday, we had an
incredible game on Sunday. What's this year's Thanksgiving weekend looking like?
Speaker 2 (35:44):
On Fox?
Speaker 3 (35:45):
So the Thanksgiving game is Giants Dallas, which we had
that game two years ago and it did forty two
million viewers to the most watched NFL regular season game
in history. Not sure the Giants are going to be
as strong by Thanksgiving this year as they were two
years ago, but that's kind of a bulletproof window, right,
no matter what the matchup is. The Thanksgiving game Troit
(36:06):
game more now than ever, and the Dallas game has
always been part of everybody's Thanksgiving celebration, but it's just
a part of the holiday. So you know you're going
to do a gigantic number. You're going to draw in
people who don't necessarily watch the NFL every week, and
you have a high level of confidence that having that
late afternoon game on Thanksgiving is going to be the
(36:27):
most watched game of the entire season. Saturday, we have
Ohio State Michigan. Michigan obviously already has one in the
lost column, but because we've now gone to a twelve
team playoff on the collegiate side, I think that Ohio
State Michigan game is still absolutely very meaningful when we
get to the last weekend of the year. We just
now have opened up Friday nights for college football on Fox.
(36:49):
We had a good premiere last week. I think we're
going to be even a little bit better this coming Friday.
And when we get to Thanksgiving weekend, we're going to
have Utah in the Friday night window. That's a game
that I think will either be to lock up a
playoff spot or potentially Utah look to put themselves in
position for a buy in the playoffs. So we like
(37:11):
what we have for Friday. And then the doubleheader that
Sunday sits with CBS, so they'll probably have there's no
probably about it. They certainly will have a bigger audience
on Thanksgiving Sunday than we will. But we have Seattle
Jets as probably our League game for the single header,
so it's a great four days of football. And I
think what we like is that in opening up that
(37:33):
Friday night and using it now as a college football
showcase window, we want to try to create circumstances where
football just takes over television five nights a week. Right,
the Amazon game is always going to be the most
watch show on Thursdays. We want our Friday night college
game to regularly win Friday nights, Saturday and Sunday are
(37:54):
taken over by football as they always have been, and
then Disney's going to control Monday Night. And we want
to give fans an opportunity to just be completely immersed
in football five days a week, all through the fall.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
And we are.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
And I've got a couple last question. This is actually
an incredible interview, and I think it's just like behind
the curtain for so many diehard NFL fans who obsess
over which broadcasters are calling their games, what channel is
it going to be on, and when is the game
and it's like, oh, there's there's a math and a
science behind all this. Last week it was the only
time this week. We're gonna this season, We're gonna get
(38:28):
this and Scott Hansen at Red Zone was having a
field day with the Decca Box. But there was ten
different games in that early window, and there were fans
of it who loved it.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
To me, as a.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Consumer, it was too much like I like to spread
them out a little bit as a network.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Is there an advantage to that a disadvantage of that?
Speaker 1 (38:45):
And I know CBS had that four o'clock window, really
and we had a couple of games on Fox unfortunately
the Rams and Cardinals was a blowout.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
But like, what do you view it as.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
As as someone who's an executive who looks at this
stuff for a living.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
We love it. I wish it was like that every week?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Talk about it?
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Why?
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Why?
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Okay? So the reason we love it is that the
number of fans that are watching via Sunday Ticket or
via red Zone or Game Day on NFL network, that's
a relatively small number of people right probably fewer than
ten percent of all viewers are watching in one of
those ways. For the most part, people are just turning
(39:23):
on their local Fox affiliate, their local CBS affiliate. They're
watching the NFL in the same way that they did
thirty or forty years ago. That's the majority of our audience.
So if mostly they're going to be watching on their
local TV stations, we kind of want to set up
a model where, for the most part, people are going
(39:43):
to get their local team at one o'clock, and then
they're going to get a big game at four twenty
five on either Fox or CBS. This week it was
Cincinnati Kansas City, and then the whole country gets a
special game in primetime on NBC. If you can have
that progression of local game it's a big four to
twenty five game to big primetime game, that's probably the
(40:04):
best model for the average viewer that's watching on a
traditional TV station. If you take some of those ten
one pm games and push them into the late window,
all that means is that you've got fewer markets that
are able to see Joe Burrow against Patrick Mahomes at
four twenty five, right, So we don't want to minimize
(40:25):
the number of people that can see the big four
to twenty five game. If my favorite team is playing
in the league window and I don't get to see Mahomes,
that means I'm probably getting a game at one o'clock
that I don't care as much about as I care
about Burrow versus mahomes, So you're just trying to maximize
the number of markets where you can go. Twenty local
teams are playing at one, We're going to get a
(40:47):
matchup of premium brands and marquee quarterbacks at four twenty five,
and then you're going to have the whole country focused
on the NBC game in primetime. That's kind of the
way that we like to see a play out.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
And it's only one time though this whole season. Now
there's gonna be bie weeks and all this stuff. Is
that something where the networks go to the league office
and say, hey, more of than or is that something
you guys just sit on your hands and you're just
you take what you're giving.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
There's not that much we can do about it, right Like,
everybody's got to have a bye week. I mean, there's
obviously a player safety consideration in that. So there's nothing
we can do about the bye weeks. And the league
has just evolved in such a way that a game
is now going to Thursday night every week. Sometimes two
games are going to Monday night. The inventory that's available
to Sunday afternoon just isn't as much as it used
(41:32):
to be, so it's pretty rare. As you just said it,
there's only one time this season that we have this
many games at one o'clock. And it's just kind of
a byproduct of the league taking more games from Sunday
and putting them on Thursday, putting them on Monday, putting
them in Europe, putting them in Brazil. Right Like, there
are just more mouths to feed, and it lessens our
ability to have that many games at one o'clock on
(41:54):
a Sunday.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
My last question, there's always is like things that pop
up on Instagram and it's like the Cowboys are Forbes is,
you know, wealthiest franchise And there was one that came
up and I don't know this source. I wish I
had it, but it was like mahomes Kelsey read Swift,
the Chiefs have overtaken the Cowboys as like the most
desired or most watched team or the most hated teams
(42:18):
something like that.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Let's put Cowboys in Chiefs in one tier.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
As a network executive and as a network one of
those next tier franchises that garner the biggest audience or
Google search trends that you've been analyzing, and it doesn't
have to be one team that's saying, hey, there's a
number three. What's that next tier of just big brand
franchises that really touch the entire country.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Yeah, I would say right now, the second tier is
San Francisco, Okay, Green Bay and Pittsburgh, right intro teams
with long histories, with very very well established brands, Teams
that win more than they lose. You know, Pittsburgh, it's
been a while since they made a deep playoff run,
(43:01):
but they still win more games than they lose basically
every season. San Francisco has been knocking on the door
of a championship for a while. Green Bays had success
basically for as long as I've been in this job.
So it's you know, passionate fan base, long history of success,
and current success, even if that current success isn't necessarily
(43:21):
at the super Bowl level, but at least at a
level of being competitive every week and then on that
top level, as you say, it's Dallas and Kansas City
have really separated themselves from everybody else thinking about this
on the way in today. Actually, I don't think there's
been a team that has as much charisma and personality
and appeal to casual fans as the Chiefs, probably since
(43:42):
the eighty five Bears. I don't know if you think
of one that's had more cultural impacts since then. But
the difference between the eighty five Bears and the Chiefs
is that the eighty five Bears blue teams out every
week and the Chiefs don't do anything but play one possession.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Games, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
And so the difference between the Cowboys and the Chiefs
right now is that Cowboys have been playing a lot
of lopsided games both last season in the first two
weeks of this year, and the Chiefs it seems like
every time they play it came back, it comes down
to a last possession.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
I think the term i'd use for the Chiefs is
cultural zeitgeist.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
There's like four quadrants.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
There's man, there's woman, there's old, there's young, and then
there's everything you could even talk you know, the Taylor
Swift element, yes, but there's also like the hardcore football them.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Chasing history with this three peet.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
I think they hit every piece of the grid, and
then to your point, they play in these.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Incredibly dramatic, nail bier games.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
They hit everything, and they're also darn fun to watch
because they seem like they love playing the sport and
they love each other.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
I don't know if there's a team that's had.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
So much fun playing football and been so much fun
to watch over the last three four decades. And the
sixties Packers predate me, and the seventies Steelers predate me.
But you're right, I think eighty five Bears with the
Fridge and McMahon like, I don't know the early nineties Cowboys,
but that was even just a little window of a
couple of years, you know.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
Yeah, I just wish that when they played those games
on CBS at four twenty five, that they blast teams out.
I'd like to see them win some games by thirty
on the other network.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Let's go, dude. I appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
If there's any other comments you'd like to make, now
is your time, because I feel like we have a
different audience than are usual in the ratings bubble audience
that we might have anything else you'd want to share
as far as insights, key learnings, takeaways, or things you
would watch if you're a fan of the game and
you haven't looked at it from that analytical vantage point yet.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
No, not really I mean, I think we covered a
lot of ground. I don't expect the average football fan
to care about ratings or TV viewership, right. It's only
interesting to a small percentage of football fans, right, And
I get that. I think what we want people to
understand is that the reason the numbers are as powerful
as they are is because of what we talked about earlier,
(45:50):
that the NFL really does bring people together. It offers
a kind of social cohesion and connectivity that nothing else does,
and that's incredibly valuable. And as a company that tries
to be a steward of the product, I think all
of us that try to be stewards of not just
the NFL but all the sports that we do, we
really have to be mindful of the idea that what
(46:11):
makes this whole business work is that we're providing something
that brings people together and helps people have meaningful connections
and experiences at a time when those connections are harder
and harder to come by. So I think, you know,
we have to think about the game on the field,
we have to think about player safety. There are so
many things that we have to have top of mind.
(46:32):
But I think at the very top of our mind
has to be the fact that what underlies this whole
business is the ability of sports to bring people together
and provide connections that matter and give us shared experiences
when there are fewer and fewer of them to be had.
And as long as we sort of have that at
the forefront of our thinking, I think we're just going
(46:53):
to continue to be successful.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
Dude, Can I tell you something like just hearing you
talk that way and what sports brings and this communal feel. Now,
I go on NFL Network every morning, but those Sundays
on Fox at eleven a m. And I step on
there Eastern and I'm with Edelman, and I'm with Vic
and Carissa and I'm with Woodson, and it's like we
feel like we're doing TV for each other and we're
(47:14):
having fun. And Fox lets us do that, which is great.
But the amount of feedback you get from people who
aren't necessarily tweeting or live reporting on every word that said,
like that just watch it because it's comforting. Like I
think there's something really to that, and I love the
fact that you embrace that, and I think you're right
on Sundays, not that this is replacing any you know,
(47:35):
spiritual or faith based thing, but there is a communal
feeling that we get on Sundays watching the NFL that
I don't think we get many other places in society today.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
We don't get it in any other places, and so
that's what we have to preserve. And you guys get
to tee it up every Sunday. You're the first voices
that a lot of people hear when they come to
the NFL on Sunday, so it's an important way to
kick off the day.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Mike. I appreciate you taking the time. You're a busy man.
This was awesome. We're gonna have you on again.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
I so appreciate it and enjoy that beautiful Los Angeles weather,
my man.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Thanks enjoy Brooklyn. We miss it there and happy to
come back anytime. Love to do it again. Thanks for
having me on.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
You're the best.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Mike mulva Hill a purely brilliant, beautiful mind when it
comes to this stuff. He's the president of Insights and
Analytics at Fox Sports.
Speaker 4 (48:22):
Guys, more to come on the season After this, I
thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
Mike moulva Hill a great guest, a great colleague at Fox.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Gosh.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
I got emotional at the end. I got like goosebumps
him talking about like the congregation of football and we all,
we all have this one central piece to our weekends,
and it is watching the NFL.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
And right on, dude, right.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
On, it's time for delivering results. Presented by Uber Eats.
Each week, I present a team or a player I
believe deserved the award for delivering results.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
And the player that I would like to shout out
this week is Raiders rookie brock Bowers. Yeah, brock Bowers talk.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Brock Bowers leads all tight ends in the NFL through
two weeks in targets, catches, and and yards.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
And he is a rookie. He's right out of the gates.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
Is it presumptive or too soon for me to say
he's already one of the best tight ends in football.
Probably there's a good group there and that tight end
university every year. But gosh, was brock Bauer's dominant in
that game against the Ravens. Nine catches, ninety eight yards
on nine targets. Every time Minshoot throw them the ball,
he caught the ball and the Raiders came way back
(49:51):
from ten points in the fourth quarter to beat a
team that was playing in the AFC Championship Game a
year ago in their building. Brock Bowers delivered, and he's
delivered through two weeks, and that was delivering results presented
by Uber Eats, where you can get almost almost anything
for game day. It's the official on demand delivery partner
of the NFL. Order now presented by uberrets get almost
(50:13):
almost anything for a game day. A lot of giorate
games up ahead in week three. We've got Saints versus Eagles.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
I love that one.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
We've got Cowboys versus Ravens. I love that one. And
you got a sneaky Sunday night interesting one with now
the suddenly resurgent Falcons playing the Chiefs in Atlanta. Bunch
of good games, bunch of good action, and we'll have
a bunch of good conversations about it next week. Let's
get after it, guys. Thanks for listening to this week's
(50:42):
episode of the Season.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
With Peter Shrake.
Speaker 1 (51:03):
The Season with Peter Schrager is a production of the
NFL in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Peter Schrager
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