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St. Louis hates the NFL? Baloney — market draws nation's third-best rating for Chiefs-Bills: Media Views
We know the popular thing to say in St. Louis about the NFL, which scorned the town, is a string of choice obscenities that can’t be printed here.
We also know that those same kind of harsh words have been directed at Stan Kroenke, who moved the Rams back to Los Angeles in 2016 — after years of neglect in St. Louis so he could blast the market for not blindly supporting his intentionally putrid product, thus strengthening his exit plan.
We also know that Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who supported the move, and Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, who was in favor of it so his team would control Missouri, have been the targets of a lesser amount of vitriol in the Gateway City.
“The hell with the NFL, we’ll never watch a game again,” is the sanitized version of a lot of St. Louisans’ venom.
While that type of bravado might make those who say it feel better about the way they have been treated by the league, the bottom line is that such tough talk merely is false bravado.
Quite simply, according to television viewership figures, the Chiefs have taken over the St. Louis market. The numbers say they are more popular than the Blues, Mizzou and even the Cardinals — let alone any other programming, local or national.
The latest example came Sunday, when the Chiefs beat the Buffalo Bills in a scintillating game that came down to the wire and was viewed by just over 50 million people nationally via CBS television and its Paramount+ streaming service. That’s a record for an NFL conference semifinal game, according to Nielsen, which measures viewership.
Of course, the best ratings were in the cities of the teams that were competing in the game: 54.9% of the Buffalo market tuned in, while the Kansas City figure was 53.4.
Next on the list wasn’t any NFL storied city — not Pittsburgh, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Francisco or anywhere else in the league. Nope, it was jilted St. Louis, which continued its remarkable run in television viewership of Chiefs games. Nielsen says the game, shown locally on KMOV (Channel 4), was seen in 31.9% of the market. That edged an NFL town, Baltimore (31.8) for the top spot outside the cities of the teams playing in the game.
“That’s incredible,” Channel 4 vice president and general manager JD Sosnoff said. “St. Louis loves football and the Chiefs.”
For perspective, the game beat the top-rated Cardinals baseball game last season (10.6) by a more than a 3-to-1 figure. And it slammed the capper to Mizzou’s best football season in nearly a decade, the 13.6 rating for the Tigers’ Cotton Bowl victory over Ohio State.
That also continued a run of dominance on St. Louis television by the Chiefs. Although exact figures were not readily available, it is believed that 31.9 rating they generated Sunday is the top figure for any program shown in the market since the Super Bowl last February — which KC won and drew a massive 42.6 rating in this market.
Since then, six Chiefs regular-season contests pulled a rating in St. Louis of at least 17, which all likely rank in the top 10 for viewership in the market over the past year. So counting the Super Bowl and Sunday’s playoff contest, it is very possible that the Chiefs occupy the top eight spots among the best-rated programs on St. Louis television in the past year — and perhaps all 10.
Meanwhile, the other NFL playoff game Sunday also drew a huge local rating — 19% of the market watched Detroit beat Tampa Bay earlier in the day on KSDK (Channel 5), according to Nielsen. The two Sunday games outdrew the pair of contests the day before. Nonetheless, the Saturday matchups had big ratings — especially considering that day traditionally is the lowest-rated one of the week.
Baltimore’s lopsided victory in the afternoon over Houston produced a combined St. Louis rating of 14.6 across KDNL (Channel 30) and ESPN. At night, KTVI (Channel 2) rang in with a 17.2 figure for its telecast of San Francisco’s narrow victory over Green Bay.
Looking ahead, the Chiefs play in Baltimore on Sunday for the AFC championship and a slot in the Super Bowl. KMOV has the game at 2 p.m.
“I don’t know you top that” rating for the Buffalo game, Sosnoff said. “But I bet it’s going to be spectacular.”
Channel 2 has the NFC finale, Detroit-San Francisco, at 5:30 p.m. Sunday. |
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