Photo: Ethan Miller
Jason Smith: "15 million people watched the game last night, 800,000 people watched the Manning broadcast. The way the Internet responded from that today, you would come away from that thinking half of the number must have watched on that channel. The coverage of that was way disproportionate. You're talking about 15 million people watching the game, and 800,000 of them watching it that way. That's the NHL. We don't talk about the NHL as much cause less than a million people watch games. Just because something is covered on social media and written about on the Internet doesn't mean it's that big of a deal. Doesn't mean it cuts through. Parts of it were entertaining, sure, but nobody watched it."
Jason Smith and Mike Harmon react to the strong ratings from the first week of the NFL season. The guys explain why the belief that "politics" were dragging down ratings in sports was always an incorrect assessment of the pulse of the popularity of sports. On the flip side, Jason and Mike point out the poor ratings from the alternate Monday night broadcast that featured Peyton and Eli Manning, which was not an indictment of the broadcast itself, but rather is further proving the point that people are flocking to football for the product on the field first and foremost.