NBC Noon/3pm games?

[Kitten Mittons]

I was just wondering the rationale behind starting games so early? Obviously assuming they are doing it for the ratings but aren't they cutting their viewership in half since it's too early on the West Coast. Not to mention it's Sunday and people go to church.

Why not have 3pm PT/6pm ET? Who are they trying to avoid on Sundays at 6pm?

I noticed ABC does the same for NBA games but why?

Click to read more...

 

[kdb209]

I was just wondering the rationale behind starting games so early? Obviously assuming they are doing it for the ratings but aren't they cutting their viewership in half since it's too early on the West Coast. Not to mention it's Sunday and people go to church.

Why not have 3pm PT/6pm ET? Who are they trying to avoid on Sundays at 6pm?

I noticed ABC does the same for NBA games but why?

They don't want to run into Prime Time on the East Coast.

On Sundays, you typically have local network affiliate news at 6 or 6:30 followed by Network Prime Time starting at 7 - NBC Dateline.

 

[Retail1LO*]

Simple. It's the weekend. People are off. They're watching TV, and as such, the networks put some of their top tier programming in front of them to watch. Evenings are always more valuable than daytime.

 

[DeathToAllButMetal]

Who in Canada stays indoors on a weekend afternoon in May? Noon, 3pm, 4pm, whatever--I've been cooped up all winter and I'm not watching TV on a weekend afternoon no matter what. Of course, the NHL couldn't care less about that, [mod del]

 

[CBCnutcase]

How about the 9AM and 10AM starts in the first round? There is a 9:30 start this Saturday.

 

[Buck Aki Berg]

I was just wondering the rationale behind starting games so early? Obviously assuming they are doing it for the ratings but aren't they cutting their viewership in half since it's too early on the West Coast. Not to mention it's Sunday and people go to church.

The west coast doesn't have half the population of the country.

 

[Koss]

Who in Canada stays indoors on a weekend afternoon in May? Noon, 3pm, 4pm, whatever--I've been cooped up all winter and I'm not watching TV on a weekend afternoon no matter what. Of course, the NHL couldn't care less about that, [mod del]

Exactly - I end up not watching most afternoon games. Who wants to stay in and watch TV all day.

 

[TaketheCannoli]

I was just wondering the rationale behind starting games so early? Obviously assuming they are doing it for the ratings but aren't they cutting their viewership in half since it's too early on the West Coast. Not to mention it's Sunday and people go to church.

Why not have 3pm PT/6pm ET? Who are they trying to avoid on Sundays at 6pm?

I noticed ABC does the same for NBA games but why?

Sports on Sunday afternoon is almost a tradition on US Network tv. Think about it, Baseball for the bulk of its history has been a daytime sport and for the most part, weekend baseball games are during the daytime. NFL football is Sunday afternoons. The evening games, of which there are very few by comparison didn't even start up until Monday Night Football. Golf coverage, basketball, snowsports, even the old Wide World of Sports have all been weekend afternoons. NBC is just following a tried and true formula.

 

[LadyStanley]

The west coast doesn't have half the population of the country.

California still hasn't given up its title as most populous state.

 

[Buck Aki Berg]

California still hasn't given up its title as most populous state.

And the east coast hasn't given up its title as most populous time zone. The Boston-Washington corridor alone has six million more people than the entire state of California.

I'm not saying it makes sense to have Californians set an alarm on Sunday morning to watch hockey, I'm saying that they catch more viewers by appeasing the east coast than they do the west.

 

[kdb209]

The US Center of Population has been slowly moving West and South, but the vast majority (75+%) of the US Population is still in the Eastern and Central Time Zones.

A quick google comes up with a few different sets of numbers:

From 2006: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=714986

The following is the result of my research for the population of US
states by time zones:


Central Standard Time (CST) Population
Alabama 4,557,808
Arkansas 2,779,154
Florida 940,665
Illinois 12,763,371
Indiana 1,299,403
Iowa 2,966,334
Kansas 2,732,821
Kentucky 989,316
Louisiana 4,523,628
Michigan 82,135
Minnesota 5,132,799
Mississippi 2,921,088
Missouri 5,800,310
Nebraska 1,645,333
North Dakota 579,019
Oklahoma 3,547,884
South Dakota 572,564
Tennessee 3,871,656
Texas 22,143,542
Wisconsin 5,536,201

TOTAL - 85,385,031

====================================

Mountain Standard Time (MST) Population
Arizona 5,939,292
Colorado 4,665,177
Idaho 1,133,936
Kansas 11,866
Montana 935,670
Nebraska 113,454
New Mexico 1,928,384
North Dakota 57,658
Oregon 31,425
South Dakota 203,369
Texas 716,426
Utah 2,469,585
Wyoming 509,294

TOTAL - 18,715,536

====================================

Pacific Standard Time (PST) Population
California 36,132,147
Idaho 295,160
Nevada 2,414,807
Oregon 3,609,631
Washington 6,287,759

TOTAL - 48,739,504

====================================

Eastern Standard Time (EST) Population
Connecticut 3,510,297
Delaware 843,524
Florida 16,849,199
Georgia 9,072,576
Indiana 4,972,570
Kentucky 3,184,089
Maine 1,321,505
Maryland 5,600,388
Massachusetts 6,398,743
Michigan 10,038,725
New Hampshire 1,309,940
New Jersey 8,717,925
New York 19,254,630
North Carolina 8,683,242
Ohio 11,464,042
Pennsylvania 12,429,616
Rhode Island 1,076,189
South Carolina 4,255,083
Tennessee 2,091,303
Vermont 623,050
Virginia 7,567,465
Washington, DC 550,521
West Virginia 1,816,856

TOTAL - 141,631,478

====================================
====================================

Sources of Reference:

Wikipedia: List of U.S. states by time zone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_time_zone

Wikipedia: List of U.S. states by population
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population

US Census Bureau QuickFacts
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html

TimeTemperature: United States Time Zones
http://www.timetemperature.com/tzus/time_zone.shtml


Search startegy:

I used the above sites to find the population of the states and their
respective time zone. When a state was divided by time zones, I
calculated the populations of the counties in the different time
zones.

Date Uncertain (2008?): http://www.newtimezones.com/pdfs/current_economic_crisis.pdf

Distribution of US Population by Time Zone:

Eastern.......................47.0%
Central........................32.9%
Mountain.......................5.4%
Pacific.........................14.1%
Alaska and Hawaii........0.6 %

And even a Sporcle Quiz - of course I've already ruined it for you:

http://www.sporcle.com/games/newmey21/tmzonepop

 

[IU Hawks fan]

Sports on Sunday afternoon is almost a tradition on US Network tv. Think about it, Baseball for the bulk of its history has been a daytime sport and for the most part, weekend baseball games are during the daytime. NFL football is Sunday afternoons. The evening games, of which there are very few by comparison didn't even start up until Monday Night Football. Golf coverage, basketball, snowsports, even the old Wide World of Sports have all been weekend afternoons. NBC is just following a tried and true formula.

/thread


That's just how it is and always has been.

 

[ncsu1]

And the 12:30 start for this coming weekend is because of the Kentucky Derby