Sports Fans Have Spoken... And They Channel Surf...!

[billyjack]

Hey guys,
So, you may remember that we discussed our New Years Eve Marathon (seems like it was only yesterday... oh yeah, it was)... its positives, negatives, and a ton of factors involved with it... it is honestly a complicated issue.

So, a loud point that was made on the negative side was that our Marathon would get hammered by the CFB Semi-Finals... a fair point, and something that can't be just ignored.

However, there were counter arguments to that point, which in some ways could turn it into a positive.

For example:
- the college football tv audience would be treated to a continuous loop of non-stop scrolling at the bottom of the tv screen... "Georgetown 75, DePaul 74, 3 OT"... "Providence 90, Villanova 88"... so free exposure, continuously, at the bottom of the screen, all day, every minute, from noon til 6am...
- people, at most, work half-days on the 31st of December (compared to mostly nobody on the 30th), and typically will not be at work for each of our 5 games.
- other weekends will still have competition from the NFL, both on Saturdays and Sundays.
- the Big East NYE tradition will soon be recognizable to sports fans, as something available to tune into while also watching the CFR Semis.
- the enormous built in audience that is enjoying the CFB playoff will have twelve hours worth of opportunities to surf over to Fox Sports 1 to watch some of our action... provided, like most people, that they own a remote control... <--- this particular point was argued at length... so...

So anyway, based on that contentious last bullet point, I put together a couple of low budget small-sample-size polls... like, very low budget polls... not Quinnipiac quality, though I am friends with some Quinnipiac parents...

The polls asked people how they view college football games on TV... the poll was posted both here at the Holy Land, and at the popular CSNBBS site that is flooded with hardcore college football fans from across the country.

The Results (paraphrased):
HOLY LAND (25 total votes):
1 vote for "I never change the channel for 3 hours"... 4%.
0 votes for "I change the channel at halftime"... 0%.
1 vote for "I change the channel at the end of each quarter"... 4%.
5 votes for "I change the channel during most commercials"... 20%.
12 votes for "I change every few minutes or between plays"... 48%.
6 votes for "I don't watch college football"... 24%.

CSNBBS (30 total votes):
0 votes for "never change channel for 3 hours"... 0%.
5 votes for "I change at halftime"... 17%.
0 votes for "I change at end of quarters"... 0%.
19 votes for "I change at most commercials"... 63%.
5 votes for "I change every few minutes or between plays"... 17%.
1 vote for "I don't watch college football"... 3%.

GRAND TOTAL OF BOTH POLLS (55 total votes):
1 vote for "never change channel for 3 hours"... 2%.
5 votes for "I change at halftime"... 9%.
1 vote for "I change at end of quarters"... 2%.
24 votes for "I change at most commercials"... 44%.
17 votes for "I change every few minutes or between plays"... 31%.
7 votes for "I don't watch college football"... 12%.

So, 87% of college football viewers change the channel either at most commercial breaks, or even more frequently, or don't watch college football in the first place. An additional 11% change by halftime. 2% (1 person) never changes the channel.

Not sure exactly what this means, except I would think that this is positive news for the Big East. Our Opening Day, which doesn't feature any "elite" matchups (say GU vs Villanova, etc), has a built in audience that is overwhelmingly prone to channel-surfing... an audience sitting captive on their La-Z-Boys for 8 hours on New Years Eve... if even a small portion of these fans surf over to us, that would be a positive in my opinion.

Was wondering what others think...?

[stever20]

very misleading because you aren't asking would football fans flip over to watch basketball...

Also- your point about the continuous scores- that's just a bunch of crap- as in the big games(like MNF), ESPN doesn't do a continuous scoreboard. It's only on the average games they do that.

[XU85]

While Stever is undoubtedly preparing his rebuttal to your positive points, I applaud you for your effort, which includes many valid points!

[hoyahooligan]

Obviously there's the problem of very small sample size and whether or not the group you polled was representative of all college football fans. It also fails to determine whether they would channel surf to our games on Fox Sports 1. I would assume that most football viewers would be more likely to change over to another football game rather than our games on FS1. Just because they're changing channels during the game doesn't mean it helps us. I don't particularly care when we have our marathon or if we continue to have our marathon. Just commenting from someone who does research about the possible flaws of this study.

[billyjack]

very misleading because you aren't asking would football fans flip over to watch basketball...

Also- your point about the continuous scores- that's just a bunch of crap- as in the big games(like MNF), ESPN doesn't do a continuous scoreboard. It's only on the average games they do that.

Just fyi, this dumb **** is using this to prove that the Big East should keep it's NYE marathon, that it won't be enveloped by the college football playoff in 8 of the next 12 years, or the NFL in 2 of the others.

If college football viewers are surfing and don't flip to FS1... then they probably wouldn't go to FS1 even if our Marathon was scheduled for the 30th. So having it on NYE isn't a loss with those specific viewers... we wouldn't have had them in the first place.

[GumbyDamnit!]

Nice work BillyJack... Not going to regurgitate the other comments about sample size. etc. We know the data points themselves probably cannot be validated but the thought process seems sound to me. Here's a few other points...

1). There are a LOT of viewers out there who are just not big college FB fans. We know here in the Northeast college FB just isn't that big. I like that we are offering an alternative. Now I wouldn't go up against the NFL but BCS FB...what's the big harm? Other hoops junkies, nationwide, for at least one night get to tune into our games.
2). If given the chance to watch Missouri vs.Texas or ND vs. UG in a bowl game, or Nova-G'town, Marq-Xavier in a BB game, what do you think the Top 500 high school basketball players in the country would prefer to watch? I LOVE THAT. Keep touting that we BE teams do one thing really well: hoops. Let these revruits text each other on NYE about a Jalen Reynolds put back, a Ryan Arch buzzer beater or D'Angelo Harrison going off for 30 at the Garden while the P5 focus all of their energy on FB. They relate to watching BB, not FB. So let's keep showing our potential recruits our product--especially on nights in which we have no other hoops competition.
3). No matter what, we ALL get to enjoy watching our teams for just about every conference game in crystal clear HD on FS1. I like that. No need to channel surf / search on my end--I know where my team is most of the time, and the broadcast is going to be crisp and well produced. No shoddy regional ESPN.

[Hoopfan]

I agree that it is a bit misleading. During football Saturdays i flip between 2-3 games depending on who is playing. I dont flip off the games to baseball right now or basketball in the fall. Its a generalization and based off the way the question was asked id answer it as i flip the channel with the belief that I was being asked about flipping between football games.

I also disagree with gum yes point about college kids watching. During bowl games i would think you,would get more to answer they are watching football and not bball. But i have no evidence to backup either side, just opinion.

[stever20]

very misleading because you aren't asking would football fans flip over to watch basketball...

Also- your point about the continuous scores- that's just a bunch of crap- as in the big games(like MNF), ESPN doesn't do a continuous scoreboard. It's only on the average games they do that.

Just fyi, this dumb **** is using this to prove that the Big East should keep it's NYE marathon, that it won't be enveloped by the college football playoff in 8 of the next 12 years, or the NFL in 2 of the others.

If college football viewers are surfing and don't flip to FS1... then they probably wouldn't go to FS1 even if our Marathon was scheduled for the 30th. So having it on NYE isn't a loss with those specific viewers... we wouldn't have had them in the first place.

The thing is, the games on the 30th(this year Music City, Belk, and San Francisco) are so putrid that a lot of those casual viewers wouldn't watch that. We would be a whole lot more likely to get casual viewers going up against Music City, Belk, and San Francisco with quite possibly 2 ACC/SEC games followed by a Big 12/Pac 12 game- than ever going up against football semifinals. I just do not think you realize how huge the football semifinals are going to be... I think the mistake you and others are making is that the NYE is what makes the marathon special. What makes the marathon special is all 10 teams playing 1st games on the same day.

Also, I think it's very interesting that Fox and Big East did not call this years marathon the annual big east NYE marathon. If they were going to do this long term, I think they would have announced the marathon as the annual NYE marathon. They just announced it as another NYE marathon. I think you are going to see more and more pushback from fans not liking that their NYE is impacted by having a conference game. Not to watch football, but to enjoy NYE. I mean, Georgetown plays a HUGE game with Xavier and it could go past midnight on NYE. That's just stupid. I understand the concept of wanting to make a splash, but I just don't think this is how you want to do it.