NEW YORK – The XFL's first season went out with a whimper.
The inaugural championship game Saturday night – probably the
football league's final telecast on part-owner NBC – drew a 2.5
overnight TV rating, less than a quarter of what the debut program
got in February.
An average of only 2.5 percent of the TVs in the country's
largest 49 markets tuned in at any given time to watch the Los
Angeles Xtreme beat the San Francisco Demons 38-6.
Tellingly, viewership declined steadily from the 8:15 p.m. ET
start of the broadcast to 11 p.m.
NBC, which joined with the World Wrestling Federation to fund
the new league, is expected to decide by the end of the month
whether to remain a partner in the XFL.
The ratings for "The Million Dollar Game" aren't likely to
dissuade the network from dropping the league. XFL broadcasts have
repeatedly set lows for prime-time ratings on major networks.
Saturday's game was preceded on NBC by the opening game of the
NBA playoff series between Minnesota and San Antonio, which drew a
4.5 preliminary rating.
The last half-hour of that broadcast drew a 5.6 – which
plummeted to a 3.4 when the network shifted to the XFL game.
The XFL averaged a 3.3 national rating on NBC during the 10-week
regular season, a number boosted tremendously by the opening-night
curiosity tune-in.
After about a 50 percent decline from Week 1 to Week 2, the
third NBC broadcast of the XFL was the lowest-ranked prime-time
show on any of the four major networks that week, tying for 89th
place in households with UPN's "Star Trek Voyager."
The ratings were so low on NBC, UPN and TNN that the league has
been giving free commercials to its advertisers since Week 4 in an
effort to make sure the spots reach as many viewers as had been
guaranteed.
The championship game did draw more viewers than the playoff
game the week before, when NBC earned a 2.0 overnight rating.
The national rating for Saturday's game will be released during
the week.
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