{"id":242351,"date":"2017-07-27T14:45:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-27T18:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=242351"},"modified":"2021-04-28T11:25:33","modified_gmt":"2021-04-28T15:25:33","slug":"survey-national-anthem-protests-hurt-nfl-ratings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/07\/27\/survey-national-anthem-protests-hurt-nfl-ratings\/","title":{"rendered":"Survey: National Anthem Protests Hurt NFL Ratings"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: James in Alexandria, great to have you. I\u2019m glad you waited, sir. How you doing?<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you for taking my call today. As your show was beginning today I came across an article on ESPN, and I knew that you would want to hear about this \u2019cause it once again proves that you\u2019re right about something. The article is about anthem protests, and there was a survey by J.D. Power, and it revealed that the number one reason why people were turning off NFL games last year was because of these protests during the National Anthem like Colin Kaepernick in this case and others. It was the reason I turned away from NFL games last year.<\/p>\n

\"\"It absolutely infuriated me that the NFL would allow this to go on after this. We have a league that scripts every last part of its presentation down to the kind of socks the players wear, and yet they were letting this go on last year. I would watch on ESPN stuff like Pardon the Interruption, and, you know, their anchors would insist that these protests were having no effect whatsoever on dwindling NFL viewership last year. So when I came across the article, I thought it was something you\u2019d like. I teach high school, and it really frustrates me \u2019cause this behavior filters down, and I have kids who won\u2019t stand up during Pledge of Allegiance each day.<\/p>\n

RUSH: That\u2019s exactly right. Whether these guys want to admit it or not, they do have influence. Some of them are role models, some aren\u2019t. But there still is the copycat influence, particularly if you acquire a lot of fame with certain behavior. That\u2019s gonna be emulated even more so. This business here, the Kaepernick and taking a knee? It would have been okay except you know what happened at every game? The TV networks covering every game during the anthem sought those people and put them on camera and made them heroes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing, okay, if you have an idiot player that wants to take a knee in protest, fine. But when the cameras are gonna find the guy and announcers are gonna proclaim him heroic and brave and courageous, I guarantee you that\u2019s gonna turn off well over half the people tuning in to watch the National Football League. That\u2019s not why they want to watch it. They want to watch it to get away from that kind of stuff that they have to deal with every other day of the week. Sports is an escape.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s three to four hours of mindless twaddle and an escape from the daily rigmarole that everybody has to deal with. That\u2019s what being a fan of a sports team is all about. There\u2019s a lot of fantasy involved. There\u2019s a lot of dreaming, “Gee, I wish I could do that.”<\/p>\n

\"\"Your team — one thing about sports fandom — I had a sociologist from Harvard once tell me that the great thing about sports — and I\u2019ve never forgotten this, folks. I was working for the Kansas City Royals, winter meetings one year in Scottsdale, Arizona. We had this Harvard sociologist, and my first reaction, “Are you kidding me? We\u2019ve got some Ivy Leaguer coming down here trying to tell us added techniques on marketing our teams?”<\/p>\n

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went. Well, it was mandatory. I went. And the guy said something that was actually one of those things that when he said it, “Yeah, absolutely.” Wish you could have thought of it yourself, but you didn\u2019t. He said the beauty of sports — now, remember, all this is in the context of us who were in marketing and sales trying to expand the number of people that visit the ballpark or watch on TV and ways to exploit their fandom.<\/p>\n

He said the unique thing about sports is it\u2019s the one thing you can invest total passion without consequence. He said try that with a woman. There were some women there, he looked at them and said, or try that with a man. What he meant by that was, your team may lose, and they may disappoint you, but your team will never try to take half of what you\u2019ve got. Your team will never divorce you. Your team will never reject you. Your team, unless you throw beer on a player, they\u2019ll never kick you out of the place.<\/p>\n

But with interpersonal relationships, everybody, the first time they experience heartbreak or hurt, they\u2019re reserved after that, they don\u2019t want that to happen again, and so they do not invest their passion totally because there\u2019s consequence. This is the definition of uber-fandom: invest total passion without consequence.<\/p>\n

Well, Colin Kaepernick taking a knee and a bunch of others protesting the United States of America as an oppressive state and then the TV networks broadcasting the game zeroing in on that behavior and heralding it and promoting it, there\u2019s no doubt it\u2019s gonna disgust people. There\u2019s no doubt it\u2019s gonna result in fewer people watching. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s enough to affect ratings, but the ratings in the NFL were down last year significantly. And they didn\u2019t come back, to the point that advertising rates, the league actually had to refund or offer make-good commercials at no charge later in the year because the price they were charged, they didn\u2019t reach the audience they were promised, which is a staple in advertising. If the differential is great, then the network has to make it good somehow, either refund the money or give \u2019em free spots that make up the lost audience.<\/p>\n

\"\"And this year it\u2019s a crapshoot, nobody knows what\u2019s gonna happen. Last year the excuse was the election. Trump and the election. That never made sense to me. Trump and the election? “Yeah, they\u2019re watching Fox News every afternoon on Sunday.” Oh, come on, give me a break. That\u2019s not why. And I don\u2019t think it was exclusively Kaepernick. I think there\u2019s all kinds of factors. This attack on the game by the uber-left as something barbaric and dangerous. They\u2019re taking the fun out of it! They\u2019re turning it into a Mad Max and the Thunderdome kind of thing.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re doing all kinds of damage. They\u2019re chipping away at the ingredients why people want to invest their passion in it. And it\u2019s not just football. But football is the target of the leftist agitators who are of course trying to wipe out things in society that offends them and they don\u2019t like.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m telling you the socialist from Harvard was right on the money. Once you eliminate the characteristic, the desire, the willingness to invest your passion without consequence, then that\u2019s a game-changer in the world of sports.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

\"\"RUSH: After our caller James in Alexandria, I found the article that he\u2019s talking about. It\u2019s actually on the ESPN website<\/a>, it\u2019s a J.D. Power survey. Twenty-six percent, a quarter of the potential audience say it was national anthem protests which caused them to watch less NFL, 25% said that was the reason. And James was right, all of these anchors and analysts at ESPN, “No way.” Everyone was pooh-poohing that, \u2019cause they knew it was. They knew it was.<\/p>\n

See, every liberal group wants to think that the audience is fellow liberals. The NFL protests? All these people protesting the NFL, all these people suing it, CTE stuff, too barbaric, they all think everybody agrees with \u2019em. They all think everybody watching is also liberal and horrified by it. They don\u2019t understand that they\u2019re not the majority, and they\u2019re not typical. That\u2019s the whole point. They are not typical and yet they exercise all this control over everything. But I\u2019m telling you, in addition to the protests, it was because TV highlighted \u2019em and then praised them.<\/p>\n

Kaepernick was courageous, Kaepernick was brave, Kaepernick had guts, taking on this big time institute, taking on his own country for the sake of making it be blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I guarantee you, your average, ordinary, patriotic American who doesn\u2019t see America as a problem in the first place is gonna look at that and go “yuk” and turn it off. They don\u2019t want to be hit in the face with that every damn time they turn on a game. That\u2019s not why they\u2019re watching it. But the left thinks that the game attracts parishioners to the liberal religion. They don\u2019t want to be serviced with all this tripe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: It\u2019s one thing, if you have an idiot player that wants to take a knee in protest, fine, but when the cameras are gonna find the guy and announcers are gonna proclaim him heroic and brave and courageous, I guarantee you that\u2019s gonna turn off well over half the people tuning in to watch the National Football League. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":242492,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nSurvey: National Anthem Protests Hurt NFL Ratings - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/07\/27\/survey-national-anthem-protests-hurt-nfl-ratings\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Survey: National Anthem Protests Hurt NFL Ratings - 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