NFL acknowledges TV viewership is down this season

There has been quite a bit of chatter among football fans in recent days about a significant decline in television audiences for National Football League games this season.

Through four weeks of the season, the aggregate audience for NFL games across its broadcast partners - Fox, CBS, NBC and ESPN - is down 11 percent.

As Fox Sports research guru Michael Mulvihill pointed out on Twitter recently, the decline for prime time national TV games has been especially pronounced. Thursday night games are down 15 percent, Sunday night games are down 13 percent and Monday night games are down 19 percent.

On Thursday, the NFL's top media-focused executives acknowledged that the league office is feeling the heat.

In a memo to team owners obtained by ESPN's Darren Rovell, senior vice president of media Brian Rolapp and senior vice president of broadcasting Howard Katz wrote: "While our partners, like us, would have liked to see higher ratings, they remain confident in the NFL and unconcerned about a long-term issue."

There are a few potential factors in the falling numbers. One is that many of the prime time games so far have been blowouts, including all three such contests in Weeks 3 and 4. There have also been some less-than-stellar matchups, such as Falcons-Saints, Dolphins-Bengals and Chiefs-Steelers.

"We are challenged in comparison to the first few weeks of the 2015 and 2014 seasons, which from a ratings perspective were two of the three best starts that we have had in the last 10 years," Rolapp and Katz wrote in their memo. "No two seasons are the same when you consider the different matchups, game windows and other factors. "

The problem of bad matchups will go away soon. NBC has Giants-Packers this coming Sunday, and will have Eagles-Cowboys in a few weeks; CBS has Broncos-Chargers next Thursday.

(ESPN, however, is stuck with Buccaneers-Panthers and Jets-Cardinals as its next two games.)

But while the matchups will get better, what might be the biggest factor in the viewership decline isn't going away until November: the presidential election.

NFL insiders and outsiders alike have seen what appears to be a correlation between the enormous interest in this year's campaign and the decline in the NFL's TV numbers so far.

"There is no question that unprecedented interest in the Presidential election is impacting primetime ratings," Rolapp and Katz wrote. "We know that the big three cable news networks (Fox News Channel, CNN and MSNBC) are up +35% among viewers and even more in some key demographics. The effect of the Presidential election on NFL ratings has been seen before: in 2000, during the campaign between George W. Bush and Al Gore, all four NFL broadcast partners suffered year over year declines — Fox was down 4%, CBS was down 10%, ABC was down 7% and ESPN was down 11%."

One thing that has not been a factor in the decline is the group of fans who've used social media to try to organize a boycott of the NFL over players protesting during the national anthem. At least, that's how the NFL office sees the matter.

"We see no evidence that concern over player protests during the National Anthem is having any material impact on our ratings," Rolapp and Katz wrote. "In fact, our own data shows that perception of the NFL and its players is actually up in 2016."

You can read the full memo here, and you can read more of Mulvhill's analysis in the series of tweets below.