Next Text: If You Like Football, You've Once Again Got to Pay $100 a Month For TV
Each Sunday, Daniel Frankel and David Bloom share thoughts, ideas and impulses related to the global technology, media and telecom industries. You can also find this weekly column on LinkedIn. Starting on Oct. 6, it will have a new platform home, Next TMT. Email if you'd like to sign up for free to that new newsletter.
DANIEL FRANKEL: Not sure if you're still in Northern Italy minding the GDP of Tuscany, Piedmont and Veneto, but I finally moved 95% of my social engagement off Twitter/X this week and onto Threads ... and it was every bit the good decision I was told it would be. My first sports-centric perusal on the platform - a next-morning dive into the New York Jets' dominant win over New England on Thursday Night Football - was satisfying. Plenty of good content and takes ... sans notes about what a boss Aaron Rodgers is for being a COVID denier. The Amazon Prime Video live stream of the game averaged 13.37 million viewers, the company said.
Barring a World Series championship from the American East-leading Yankees, the Jets, Giants, Rangers, Islanders, Knicks, Nets and Mets will have exceeded more than 100 combined seasons without bringing a major sports title to the Big Apple, according to a recent Associated Press tally. Responding to Nielsen's 2025 "universe estimates," WPIX-TV research exec Eric Kabakoff posted on LinkedIn Friday morning a useful reminder of the density and impact of the New York DMA. In short, it helps everyone when these teams are winning and drawing an audience.
DAVID BLOOM: Greetings from our new adjunct bureau on the Italian Riviera. Office hours are from Maybe Later Today to How About Next Week, except when it comes to the Next Text, the holiest writ being writ since at least the Bill of Rights, at least until we see how that whole presidential election thing plays out in the States. Speaking of prudent shifts, congrats on the almost-exit from the soul-destroying sump of an evil genius/ketamine fiend gabillionaire to a quantifiably less terrible platform owned by another gabillionaire with apparently fewer problematic intentions for the Republic. Feels like a win. I've been on both platforms on Threads; join me!) for a while, but generally have pulled back on social media, joining a significant slice of the populace seeking more meaningful life connections. By all accounts, the same is happening to the dating apps. I regard this as social progress.
Your New York dude's homer attitude is completely unsurprising, given what he does and where. It does seem that the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB, not to mention the MSL, NWSL, and WNBA have managed just fine in the absence of any display of competence by Kabakoff's Klatch of Keystone Kops franchises. At least the Knicks and Yankees have lately provided some competitive respite. Perhaps more interesting than the Championship Winter in the No. 1 market is how sports programming will displace more and more entertainment programming on broadcast and even on streaming. NBC's piece of Comcast's new $2.5-billion-a-year NBA deal will displace 150 hours of prime-time programming. ABC will see lesser displacement, while Amazon and Netflix aren't spending more on entertainment programming, so their sports ventures mean fewer shows featuring clueless Americans in Paris or the Middle East. This all adds to the real winter of discontent in Hollywood, with even fewer scripted and unscripted projects being commissioned. Happy Emmys Week to you, Hollywood!
Speaking of our sports obsession, we should note the last Woj Bomb of all, the stunning decision by ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski to forgo another $20 million contract as the Four-Letter Network's crack NBA scoops machine. What will he do instead of working multiple iPhones 23.5 hours a day for every shred of fast-breaking news that he would then spill on, wait for it, X? That always seemed a bit odd, probably to his ESPN bosses too. The Woj will become general manager of the men's basketball team of his alma mater, tiny St. Bonaventure University. GM is a new position among many college football programs these days, as they grapple with NIL, TV rights, player salaries, the depredations and opportunities of the transfer portal, and old-school high school recruiting. The University of Alabama's football team just bent everyone's brains by giving GM Courtney Morgan an $825,000 a year contract. That's a lot of money, but that's also a thankless job, especially at a pressure cooker such as 'Bama. But lots of luck to Woj. I still think he should join Next Text's fast-growing adjunct bureau in Rapallo, which is far more temperate than the Bonnies' upstate New York home. But the heart will do as the heart will do.
FRANKEL: I noticed that NBC won the 2023-24 broadcast TV season in total viewers, averaging 4.9 million a night, a performance charged by the 14 million viewers it averaged for the Summer Olympics. NBC also won the demo race, averaging an incredibly tiny 0.72 rating in the 18-49 demo. Two years ago, we made a big deal out of it when NBC won the year with a 1.1 demo rating average . Speaking of ratings, I Scripps chimed in with more explosive WNBA audience news - the league's audience grew 133% this past regular season on Ion.
I'm also looking forward to seeing how things play out for YouTube's new connected TV app, which was due for some tech lovin'. Here at the Adjunct Bureau, with its erratic internet connection and dinner-plate-sized TV screen, we haven't been actually watching much video the past couple of days. But I'm interested to read the interface is designed to look more like SVOD apps, with more prominent "subscribe buttons, QR codes, and widescreen trailers that YouTube calls "immersive previews."
