With just a week to go before the election, maybe it’s time to pause the number-crunching and take a look at some possible leading indicators in the larger culture that might indicate that real Americans have had it up to their keisters with the nasty Left and its mockery of American tradition. Exhibit A:
The NFL continues to have a ratings problem, even as the league barrels toward the second half of the season and coverage of the presidential election is winding down ahead of Election Day. Monday Night Football once again took a ratings tumble year-over-year, as the Vikings-Bears Halloween matchup drew a 7.2 overnight rating, which is down 18 percent from Colts-Panthers in Week 8 of 2015 (8.8), according to Austin Karp of SportsBusiness Daily.
Sunday Night Football took a big hit as well, losing to Game 5 of the World Series in the Oct. 30 ratings battle by a margin of 15.3 to 11.6. It was the first time since 2011 that the World Series beat SNF in a direct ratings competition. The two programs also went up against each other in 2015, but the World Series-clinching win by the Kansas City Royals on Nov. 1, 2015 lost out to Broncos-Packers on SNF that night.
There’s no doubt that the 2016 World Series has some extra juice to it, as the Chicago Cubs have a chance to win their first World Series since 1908 while the Cleveland Indians have a chance to end their own 68-year drought. But even playoff baseball historically loses out to regular-season NFL games in primetime, which makes the World Series’ victory over the NFL striking.
The NFL will come to regret its passivity in the face of Colin Kaepernick’s anti-American antics, and the ripple effect it’s had throughout the league.
The NFL has faced a flurry of negative off-field stories in recent years, including domestic violence and DeflateGate. Most recently, the national anthem protests led by Colin Kaepernick have sparked a backlash whose true size is relatively unknown… The actual games and the broadcasts also have lost appeal. The endless penalty flags and commercials have also turned off viewers, as has the actual competition.
It’s even more complicated for ESPN, which has seen a precipitous drop in TV subscribers in recent months. Neilsen recently reported that the network had lost over 620,000 subscribers in just the past month, but the ratings measurement giant recently retracted the estimated numbers to investigate their accuracy after Disney execs strongly disputed them, according to Variety. The network has reportedly lost over 11 million subscribers since 2011, which is almost certainly at least a partial result of “cord-cutting” by younger viewers ditching traditional cable.
Go ahead — whistle right past that graveyard! Meanwhile, Exhibit B…
“The Bud Light Party” has ended a little earlier than expected.
AB InBev wrapped up its Wieden + Kennedy campaign starring Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen a few weeks ahead of schedule. The news comes on the heels of the company cutting its revenue forecast for the year in response to a disappointing third quarter that saw declines in Bud Light sales.
Instead, the brand will turn its attention to the Bud Light X Lady Gaga Dive Bar Tour and its NFL-focused marketing efforts.
“We recently wrapped the Bud Light Party campaign, [which was always intended to end in the fall], to transition to Bud Light’s NFL programming, supported by strong creative execution and significantly increased coverage of our team cans across the U.S.,” said Bud Light senior director of marketing communications Lisa Weser.
In January, the brand pitched the campaign as a political parody—which makes the timing of its conclusion somewhat surprising as the election is still more than a week away. The last ad in “The Bud Light Party” series appears to have been August’s gender-identity-focused “Labels,” which arrived over a month before the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
I mean, who but the most dedicated Trump voter and stump-toothed troglodyte couldn’t love this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JohgwbpQuy8
They went full retard. You never go full retard.
RIP, Bud Light Party.
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