I personally hate prime time sports, but that’s because of my crazy sleep/work schedule. But let’s talk about it from an honest and straightforward standpoint.
Prime time is when sports are on every weeknight, because people are working all day…fine, let’s go with that.
Now what’s your excuse on Sundays? Ratings? Well, the ratings are mostly there.
For example Sunday Night Football ranks pretty high, and people are already watching football all day, so now you have a game stand out.
But what about Sunday Night Baseball?
The players hate it, because it’s an 8PM game, and sometimes they are traveling the same night for a game the next day (sometimes even at 1PM, which is completely unfair).
The fans hate it, because no one is sitting watching baseball all day and needs that extra cherry on top with a night game. And if you had planned to take your kid to a day game (as baseball is a lot more family friendly than football (thanks in part to prices)), that is now spoiled by the night game (during school season).
I brought all this up because of the US Open this past Sunday, and its post-10PM finishing time. While I’ve previously enjoyed watching the last few holes on a Sunday afternoon, I wasn’t about to stay up late for it…although if it was the last in a chase for a Grand Slam maybe I would’ve…
And what about the NBA Finals, starting an hour later than it used to. One can argue this is to make it easier for the Pacific States to watch, and in an interview I heard on The Herd with NBA commissioner Adam Silver he said that the ratings were successfully higher in the later slot.
Let’s make all weekend games be during the day, and treat Sunday night like “the night before a work day” that it really is.
Aviously 