Televison Ratings for Skating Take a Nose Dive

[lotusland]

Very interesting article ... is this a true indication that the end of figure skating as we've known it since the "Why me? Why me?" hay days leading into the Lillehammer Olympics?

http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/international/cs-0504010207apr01,1,1429120.column?coll=cs-international-print&ctrack=1&cset=true

[noavail]

8O 8O Those are horrible ratings, even for cable! A telecast of golf or bowling on network television a Saturday afternoon brings in higher ratings!! If figure skating wants to remain visible in the U.S., then they need to get thee back onto network TV, anywhere on network TV.

[flyingonglass]

If ratings are down, the general popularity of the sport are down.
Has anyone actually seen an obvious decline of students at their rinks, in terms of the number of students now as opposed to the number of students say 4 years before?

[Isk8NYC]

Has anyone actually seen an obvious decline of students at their rinks, in terms of the number of students now as opposed to the number of students say 4 years before?

Absolutely! Our group registrations have declined substantially. In fact, this month's PSA magazine has an article on the decline, stating it was related to several factors, including the judging scandals, hockey violence, and the cancellation of the NHL season.

[flyingonglass]

Absolutely! Our group registrations have declined substantially.
This is interesting, maybe it's because of my age or location or that I'm just not paying enough attention but I have not seen a significant decline personally with skaters but I have noticed a decline in audiences at shows. I've heard about the deline for several years though, but it seems that more and more people are opting to coach, and work shows than retire and leave skating altogether, so I thought the decline wasn't that bad. 8O

[7302005]

I agree about the decline in the numbers at an ice show. We are in a drought area for skating, - pretty much zero until you are a hockey fan, so only SOI or COI will be here - no ice club skating events, etc.

Event tickets used to be close to sold out. Now there are great numbers of empty seats. Not even the addition of Sarah Hughes did anything to impact ticket sales (although she had her own pre-teen fan club cheering her on).

It becomes a round robin effect for both television ratings and ice shows:

1. audience numbers go down, network tries to recoup contract fees and more to make a profit through commericals

2. audience numbers go down, network terminates contract. New contract signed by cable nework. cable network tries to recoup costs by excessive commericals. Viewer ship declines - hello, does everyone have cable? hello, does everyone want to listen to the same commercial after every skate? hello, programming not advertised?, hello, non ice skating announcers shouting at everyone? (well you see I could go on and on)

3. Articles written to say what terrible audience ratings occurred - gosh what a great way to justify the dropping of a contract in the future.

4. claims of oversaturation are BUNK. I am a basketball fan - one can find basketball on during the season every night. Network, ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN pay for view, pay for view, FOX Sports, TBS, WGN, TNT, etc. IT IS THE FAN BASE WHO MUST PUSH FOR VIEWERSHIP TO RISE. How or what to do about it I am not sure. Maybe teach Chris Burman (is that his name the football announcer on ESPN) to do a 90 second wrap up in a Sportscenter news regarding any ice skating competition? You know something like - "now this was called a level 3 spin, however, the technical assistant disagreed and called it a level 2spin - the instant replay showed a cheated edge - you vote, wow look at this jump and when he hit the boards, the entire arena could feel the thump... :)

If TV viewership is down, then it affects the ice show attendance.

[IceKween]

There are much fewer preteens skating at my rink than four years ago. I'm not surprised because I wouldn't encourage my kid to excel at skating. It's expensive, too political, and the judging is too corrupt and nothing is being done about it. I'd spend $50K a year on tennis or golf for my kid before skating.

[loveskating]

I would not let my grandkids anywhere near skating...its corrupt...but I believe the corruption comes mainly from the US right now. There was no justification for the "scandal" at SLC based on the pairs, it could legitimately have gone either way.

I also have no desire to spend a fortune, make huge sacrifices, and then have my grandchild wind up Harding to Kerrigan's ice princess, or to wind up like Pasha Grishuk or Anissina and Piezerat! Its bad enough that children have these dreams, yet most of them will not be found to have the goods...that is reason enough not to let them skate, but then to add all this on top, its way too much.

What I saw being done to Sasha Cohen (for being a great skater, IMHO) is just vicious, that you (whoever you are) cast her as Harding to Kwan's Kerrigan by the use of that outrageously transparently stupid "bump" incident! That was so contemptible because ANYONE who has the slightest knowledge of skating knew there could not possibly be any significance to such a bump if it occurred at all, since these continually occur in skating so you (whoever you are) were appealing only to the totally ignorant -- and at the same time, giving a literal spit in the face to anyone knowledgeable about skating...why should anyone who saw that stay involved in skating...after witnissing such gross, in your face, outrageously vicious trickery as that? Its not the US Army, you know!

As for oversaturation, skaters do the same things, the same elements, the only thing that changes is the characteristics of the skater, and the quality with which they do the SAME elements or they invent elements.

What makes skating exciting is etiher a great skate, or great elements!

I think people are bored senseless with (1) the same frigging skaters for the last 10-15 years, (2) turned off by the constant childish insults made about most of the skaters, (3) turned off by the politicization of skating, (4) turned off by things that children ought not to see, and (5) most of all, turned off by the constant claims of corruption since 1998, and most of all by what happened at SLC.

[doubletoe]

I suspect that before the early 1990's, figure skating was never any more popular than it is now. I think the Nancy-Tonya thing gave it a whole lot of publicity and prompted lots of people to start watching skating and lots of kids to start skating. I think what's happening now is just that we're returning to what used to be normal. Does anyone know what the ratings were before the Nancy-Tonya scandal and how many skating events were actually televised then? If I recall correctly, there were a lot fewer competitions back then anyway (i.e., no Grand Prix events, etc.).

[icedancer2]

I suspect that before the early 1990's, figure skating was never any more popular than it is now. I think the Nancy-Tonya thing gave it a whole lot of publicity and prompted lots of people to start watching skating and lots of kids to start skating. I think what's happening now is just that we're returning to what used to be normal. Does anyone know what the ratings were before the Nancy-Tonya scandal and how many skating events were actually televised then? If I recall correctly, there were a lot fewer competitions back then anyway (i.e., no Grand Prix events, etc.).

I remember this very well -- having been a skater and a skating enthusiast since the early '60s I remember when Wide-World of Sports would show the top three in Men's and Ladies at Worlds in the last half-hour of the show that would also include other sports.

There was some televised skating in the '80s but it was kind of here and there. Occassionally ESPN would pick up Skate America or something. By the end of the 80s they showed a LOT of the competitors in each discipline, and a lot less fluff. The Grand Prix Series per se didn't exist, but most of those competitions did -- Skate America, NHK, Lalique, etc. and occassionally they would be televised.

The Tonya-Nancy affair raised the level of televised skating and general skating awareness incredibly -- the audiences got saturated -- my friends would say, "We see the same people all of the time and it is boring" -- so now you have smaller audiences and less skating on TV -- my guess is that it will come back to life eventually, but if it doesn't oh, well, I can still enjoy my own skating and skating-related activities! :roll:

[what?meworry?]

Very interesting article ... is this a true indication that the end of figure skating as we've known it since the "Why me? Why me?" hay days leading into the Lillehammer Olympics?

http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/international/cs-0504010207apr01,1,1429120.column?coll=cs-international-print&ctrack=1&cset=true

without doubt the harding/kerrigan matter raised awareness of figure skating. but that interest was sustained over many years.

i think the real culprit is the ABC arrogance of presuming they know what viewers want in figure skating. we are pounded over and over again with the same old stuff. they tell us we are only interested in the big names while never showing the up-and-coming skaters. hell, they hardly even show a reasonable compliment of the top skaters!

they special-interest us to death, or at least terminal apathy, on the top skaters eating up time that would otherwise be used to show more skating!
those pukey chick-flick profiles are enough to make a maggot gag.

when they wanted to develop and market football did they show the personal lives of the players, the petty rivalries, and only the top teams in the playoffs?

no the farking way! they broadcast everything they could, including the monday night football game.

well that's what eurosports does. they show all the skating and all the skaters. and they show it LIVE! if abc didn't have a bunch of bobble-headed yes-persons sucking up to their supervisors they might actually have pulled this off to insure future revenues.

so espn is whining about low ratings after delaying the broadcast a week and, DUH, everyone already knows the results? just how dumb are these people?

maybe the biggest mistake the us networks make is writing off figure skating as girlie stuff and relegating it to slots opposite guy stuff. had they put it in neutral or soft slots (the repeats) they might be able to really build audience between the livecasts and repeats.

abc is its own worst enemy here but they get to blame the sport. can't tell you the number of times i've seen this internally in companies.

[lotusland]

Having been a skater pre-Harding/Kerrigan, and now just a club/section volunteer and arm-chair fan of the sport, I also remember what skating television coverage was like before Tonyagate.

Canada's coverage originally was limited to Johnny Esaw strong arming the network into covering the Canadian Championships (all four disciplines) once a year and, for those of us who picked up American stations, watching a couple of the top singles skaters on a delayed tape broadcast of a couple of events on ABC's Wide World of Sports.

There is no question, post Tonyagate, skating registration soared, it almost gained respect amongst the Canadian hockey crowd. I had more than one comical conversation with hockey dads about "that fiesty American kid." :lol: It's my personal experience registration in the learn-to-skate programs and private skating stayed strong until the later '90's and then it began to slowly drop off. Traditionally registration would rise the year following a Winter Olympics, the trend remained until Salt Lake City ... we did not see any increase after 2002. The numbers in my club, and my Section (province), are way way down.

There are probably a number of reasons:
1) expenses associated with the sport
2) lifestyle changes in the general population (people want to do a little of everything, music lessons, swimming lessons, soccer, baseball etc., and not necessarily alot of just one activity that is going to take up their entire year, year after year
3) negative public image of the sport based on a never-ending stream of stories regarding corruption in judging etc.
4) the INTERNET and SATELLITE ... for those who are interested they can get immediate results off the net and watch it live on satellite

so,

if CBC, CTV, ABC, ESPN or any other broadcaster can't figure out they need to compete for viewers against what "today's technology" offers, then it only seems to make sense few people would be interested in the broadcast of an event that is frequently two to three weeks old.

[Snowflake3939]

Did any of the TV networks stop to think that one of the reasons that ratings might be down is because they continually move skating to stations that a lot of people don't have? Splitting skating between the main CTV network and TSN, was a big mistake! How many people have TSN? If skating is on TV, first you have a hard time finding it, then you have to figure out what time zone you're in, and then is it going to be on at the time they publicized! It's becoming increasingly frustrating and then the networks blame our "lack of interest" for the decline in ratings!

[WildRose]

if CBC, CTV, ABC, ESPN or any other broadcaster can't figure out they need to compete for viewers against what "today's technology" offers, then it only seems to make sense few people would be interested in the broadcast of an event that is frequently two to three weeks old.
There are obviously problems in the US, but television ratings have not taken a nosedive in Canada, in fact they're up from last year. Viewership for Worlds on CBC *increased* by 17%. The events broadcast by CTV (Skate Canada, Canadians, World Team Pro Championship) also did well this season, both in viewership & in attendance.

[Snowflake3939]

If the TV ratings are up in Canada for Worlds, it was because it was on CBC (a channel that everyone in Canada can view without purchasing cable), it was on in prime time (8-10pm Monday - Friday on the West Coast) and it was on when they advertised it would be. They also showed more skaters than CTV and TSN has done over the past few years.

[WildRose]

If the TV ratings are up in Canada for Worlds,
Just to clarify, CBC's ratings increase was reported in the Canadian media, as well as in Phil Hersh's article about ESPN in the US press. Sounds as though skating did well in Japan too.

"World meet ratings were good in Canada, where the CBC saw a 17-percent increase over 2004, and Japan, where the women's free skate (18 share) was the most-watched sports program of the week."
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/11280621.htm

[loveskating]

Which goes to show, if you actually treat the sport with a little respect you'll get the viewers. I should mention that given the time differential, not having live coverage of Worlds is fully understandable (then again, at least where ESPN is concerned, what else of importance are they showing at 5am...they managed to cover the World Cup live from midnight to 8am)

I think it is more complicated...Canada, for one thing, helped fashion the COP and is content with it, whereas US skating, and ABC have been sniping at it continually, and at the judges and the marks.

The original drop off occurred after SLC...and yet those in charge in the USFSA claim this was caused by "overexposure"??? HELLO!!! Even on the net, literally THOUSANDS of posters just dropped away! Yet US skating via ABC continues to fire at the ISU and COP...and in other ways appears to be fractured inside and polarizing outside.

Fundamentally, however, its just really good that the USFSA has hired some professional marketing people because it seems to me that the USFSA has been mistaken, if not delusional, in thinking it can "go mainstream" and compete with football, etc., or that it can draw large numbers of men into skating.

[Isk8NYC]

My husband was making jokes the other day about boosting skating's ratings. No, he hasn't seen this thread, but here's his idea: anyone going to a skating show gets a free souvenir: a foam-rubber crowbar. He must have told 50 people this, some of whom were gullible enough to believe it.

[loveskating]

I'm starting to get a bad feeling...because apparently, ESPN is claiming that the ISU nixed Dick Button, but Cinquanta is denying it.

I hope the US is not preparing yet another scandalous olympics.

[snoopysnake]

Things that have affected ratings:

- Too many fluff pieces. The competitions are not presented like competitions, they are presented like, here are the skaters we have decided are on the broadcast. Case in point, ABC (but not ESPN) chacked Stephane Lambiel's LP last year, and now he's World Champion. There surely would have been room in ABC's broadcast last year if they'd chacked the fluff stories instead.

- Too much chacking in general. Viewers realize the networks don't respect the skating fans.

- Yes, too many ads and what's worse, the same ad over and over and over again. I was screaming at the TV, "you were just eating that damn Smart Ones entree 5 minutes ago!"

- Announcing quality. Scott Hamilton rarely gets to announce competitions any more. If ABC/ESPN doesn't wise up and make Paul Wylie the lead announcer for all of its broadcasts, they are going to continue to lose audience.

- Cable. Too many channels. Too many skating shows on at the same time, when they are on.

- No more professional competitions.

- Too much emphasis on quads and combinations. Skaters fall more, and have less artistry and too many injuries. e.g. maybe more people would have watched the men's event if Evgeni could have skated.

- Too many GP events where we are shown the same skaters doing the same programs.

- Too many replays of injuries (e.g. Totmianina)

- Lack of staying power of skaters after Olympics. (Injuries, no more pro events.) Lipinski and Hughes are the most obvious examples.

- CBS getting back rights to football. I think this one here may be one of the biggest problems. There used to be skating on CBS every weekend.

- Too much non-skating performances during shows, especially on NBC. (Live singers, Carly Patterson, etc.)

- Too much MTV-style video work. Interview the skaters about skating, don't dress them up and show us closeups of them standing around like models.

- COP - makes it impossible for viewers to try to "judge along" with the real judges.

- Judging scandals - another one of the biggest problems.

- Up-and-down fortunes of US and Canadian skating stars. In Canada, Sandhu and Buttle have not achieved the dominance nor superstar status of Orser, Stojko, and especially Browning. No eligible US male has had the drawing power of Hamilton or Boitano. Kwan is not a sure thing any more; Cohen still isn't. Belbin and Agosto can't go to the Olympics next year. US pair rankings the weakest in years. The skating momentum right now is in Japan and China. North America gets more excited when their own skaters are doing well.

- Horrible costumes that distract from the actual skating.

- Increased use of avant-garde music. This is not automatically bad, but it does alienate some of the viewers.

- Too much use of the same music. I happen to love Malaguena, but that's a good example. We hear Vanessa Mae's Bach/Vivaldi, Romeo and Juliet (all versions), The Matrix, and so many others ad nauseum.

- Retirement or winding down careers of some of the real superstars of the sport (Hamill, Boitano, Hamilton, Yamaguchi, Torvill and Dean, and others.) They are naturally not at the top of their form any more, but it may be harder to warm up to the newer skaters since many are so fond of the previous "dynasty." I guess this aspect is an unavoidable occupational hazard, and a tribute to those great performers.

[lilj1969]

There are a few reason's for falling viewership

1. Lack of a big personality ! I'm sorry but there is currently no Tiger Woods of ice skating. Getting new people to see what it's all about. I don't care for golf but I have watched Tiger on T.V.

2. Lack of advertising, I only find out what's on, after it's been aired from other people at the rink. If I don't know what time ? what station ? I can't watch

3. Live airing, I have also found myself looking up results a few days before the competition gets aired and lost interest in watching, not lost interest but just lowered it on the priorities list.

4. SLC SCANDAL, giving two gold medals for the pairs was the biggest mockery and joke of almost all time in the sporting world. I'm a big boxing fan, you talk about scandal, but never have I seen two championship belts given out for a fight. I have seen belts taken away but never given out after the fight was in the books.
The SLC games I believed destroyed the credibility of figure skating for a long time, it was by far the stupidest thing figure skating has ever done.

[snoopysnake]

What I meant by the COP comment is that the COP is too complicated for fans to understand, not that it is necessarily wrong for the sport, and that this has perhaps contributed to ratings declines. (Personally I think the new system has even more holes for the judges to "cheat" with.)

[loveskating]

Th 6.0 system was hardly easy to grasp!

There is room to cheat in the COP, but there is much less room.

The judges are NOT secret. If ABC can find out who they are, and what marks they gave Sarah Hughes in the SP at the Olympics (Brennan during the last Worlds telecast), then they are not secret at all.

Who gave what marks is not public info at the time of competition...so who cares? Any action taken against any judge would not be on the spot anyway, which would only mean that, for instance, NBC could not build up a lot of steam for a scandal on the spot like they did at SLC.

[noavail]

it isn't secret judging but it is not making judges accountable for their marks or forcing them to justify their marks. i recently talked to a sportswriter that just flat out said that figure skating is in the back pages because nobody has any idea what they are judging anymore. the public would be FINE with the judging if they just flat out told them what they were looking at and judging. the guy even pointed out that there was an article that came out after salt lake city that interviewed some of the judges from the ladies event in salt lake city who told them how they judged that night (i.e. so and skater wasn't as crisp as so and so other skater, skater a was slower, etc) and what they saw and if more judges did that, then it would be much better.

[loveskating]

Well, as I understand it, the judges do have to justify their marks but WITHIN the ISU structure, which IMHO is a due process issue. In any case, justifying one's marks to the PRESS is hardly going to insure any kind of fairness, to the contrary, each media formation is a NATIONALISTIC one, and hardly fair by definition.

Furthermore, the system of dropping the high and low marks in and of itself favors the median...for instance, in the SP at Nagano, the Canadian judge gave Stojko a 5.9 for presentation....which was way out of line from the rest of the panel on the high end, and under the COP would be dropped. Same goes for nationalistic cheating on the low end.

The public goes along with the media...and the media told them that figure skating was totally corrupt, and for 20 years in the past...that is what is wrong...and then ABC continued to complain at every single competition since! That is the problem!