The World Cup is almost into the second round but the real competition might be taking place behind the cameras, between the broadcasters. In the U.S., two companies have television broadcast rights: Disney (ABC and ESPN) has the English-language rights and Univision (Univision, Telefutura and Galavision) has the Spanish-language rights. It was expected that Unvision would [...]

Last night CBS attracted an average of 106.5 million viewers during its transmission of Super Bowl XLIV, which effectively made it the most watched broadcast program of all time. While the Super Bowl has always been a major broadcast event in the United States its average audience has been growing steadily at around 2.3% since [...]

The NHL’s Stanley Cup and NBA Finals just finished up. The Stanley Cup had a strong series which went the full seven games; its ratings 19% above last year’s. The NBA Finals this year were so-so, especially in comparison to last year’s match up between the Lakers and the Celtics. Unsurprisingly the Finals draw 4% [...]

During my last posting I took a look at the audience levels for the Academy Awards since 1974. Since I had the data handy I decided to compare the viewing trends to the Superbowl.

Superbowl XLIII is less than five days away and I am looking forward more to the commercials than the game itself . A Superbowl commercial has be better than the game since it has only 30 seconds to grab a viewer’s attention and be as memorable as any play or touchdown that occurs between breaks. [...]