It was a running joke in 2022 and 23 that the football deities were cursing the Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit commentating combination with less than thrilling games in their debut season as the figureheads of Thursday night football.
Thursday Night Football Faced Struggles Over The Past 2 Seasons
TNF has never had the games of the calibre of the Sunday or Monday night slate, but the games were often passable and often times even highly enjoyable. In the past two years, however the game quality plummeted, and was not helped by the oft-criticized lack of emotive announcing from Michaels in his advanced years.
dude Al Michaels makes these TNF games unbearable…
a potential game-winning field goal block just happened and he just goes “blocked 😐” https://t.co/sj3419UFHz
— communist andy reid 🇦🇴 (@bigredpacked) October 4, 2024
2022-2024 Al Michaels one of the worst I’ve ever seen deadass https://t.co/M81C1bx6Xi
— japta (@DubsBetterrr) October 4, 2024
al michaels is the only play-by-play guy that makes football seem boring
— Austin Gayle (@austingayle_) October 4, 2024
Feels like Al Michaels has lower energy every week
— Johnny barks (@Johnny_Barks) October 4, 2024
Despite this poor streak of games combined with this perceived lacklustre announcing, Thursday Night Football seems to have finally turned a page in 2024.
2024 Proving To Be Trending In The Right Direction For Thursday Night Football
We had the thrilling season opener where the Baltimore Ravens were half a foot away from a last minute equalizer against the Kansas City Chiefs, the Bills’ triumphant KO of the Miami Dolphins and last night’s belter of a tie between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Atlanta Falcons, which some are calling the greatest Thursday night football game of all time.
According to ProFootballTalk, after another strong viewership day from Thursday night’s NFC South divisional rampager, TNF ratings are up an impressive 20% year-on-year.
The Amazon Prime broadcast of the Week 5 Thursday night game attracted an audience of 12.3 million, on average.
That’s five percent more than last year’s Bears-Commanders game in Week 5, and 27 percent higher than the Colts-Broncos all-time stinker from Week 5 of 2022.
Through four games, Thursday Night Football is averaging 14.17 million viewers. That’s an increase of 20 percent over last year’s full-season average, and 48 percent higher than the 2022 average.
Another impressive feat for the NFL, whose ratings are already at an all time high across the board, having cemented themselves as easily the nation’s number 1 sporting league.
Will it remain this way? Quite possibly – particularly if the quality of games continues to stay at this level, particularly now that we are edging ever close to the “stay warm and inside” portion of the year.
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