4th down and long for XFL
League vows 2nd season, Peacock weighs options
A spokesman for NBC says the network has made no decision about a second season of weekly primetime telecasts on Saturday, despite averaging a record-low 3.3 rating -- 27% below NBC's guarantees to advertisers.
Officials at the XFL say the league will stay alive for another season even if NBC elects to cancel the Saturday-night games, which ran from February through April during the XFL's rookie season.
The XFL should make it to the 2002 season, said David Carter, a principal in the L.A.-based Sports Business Group, because "Vince has the leverage to keep the weekly games on UPN Sunday night and TNN Sunday afternoon." The leverage is the Thursday-night "WWF Smackdown," which is UPN's highest-rated series by far, and the Monday-night "Raw Is War" on TNN, the highest-rated year-round series in all of basic cable.
Ties that bind
The WWF has engineered an umbrella deal with Viacom, which owns UPN and TNN, that links the two companies closely in a variety of showbiz ventures. "Smackdown" and "Raw Is War" are "tentpole series properties that make Vince McMahon the 800-pound gorilla at UPN and TNT," said Carter.
NBC could stay on as an investor in the league for the second year, but any talk that the network would shift the Saturday TV games to its sister cable channel CNBC is not an option, Carter explained. "CNBC's demographic is the upscale white male executive in his 50s," he said. "The only two people in that category who watch XFL games are Vince McMahon and Dick Ebersol," chairman of NBC Sports.
Fourth and long?
With only UPN and TNN as partners for national telecasts, Neal Pilson, head of his own sports consultancy and former president of CBS Sports, said, "The XFL will have to generate a greater proportion of its revenues from the eight ballparks, and from local advertisers."
Pilson said the XFL will have a rough time getting masses of male viewers to watch the games in primetime because "after dark, the man loses control of the clicker to the woman of the house."
With the double whammy of low ratings and a depressed advertising marketplace, the XFL has shouldered a $40 million loss for the 2001 season, according to industry estimates.
Published reports say that the eight XFL teams will hire more scouts and stretch out the length of pre-season training camps. The league will also produce more features about the players and cut back on gimmicks like setting up cameras in the cheerleaders' dressing rooms.
