The once unthinkable is happening: Chicago is tuning out the Bears.
Television ratings for the first eight Bears games of 1998 are down more than 40 percent since 1994, the team’s last playoff season. The decline is almost 60 percent from the glory days of the 1980s, when area football fans seemed to have their televisions surgically attached to WBBM-Ch. 2 on Bears Sundays.
The fallout from two straight losing seasons and a 1-5 start this year has meant that for many fans, a Bears game no longer is mandatory viewing. And on the radio side, WMAQ-AM 670, the Bears’ flagship station, is said to be losing more than $1 million per year because of sagging advertiser interest in the Bears.
In 1994 the Bears averaged a 29.4 rating and a 59 share on Sundays: one rating point is worth 31,000 homes and share is the percentage of sets in use tuned to the game.
This year the Bears are averaging a 16.9 rating and a 35 share, which means nearly 400,000 fewer homes are watching Dave Wannstedt’s team. The drop in interest is in line with recent trends, which have seen an increase in no-shows at Soldier Field and a decline in season-ticket renewals.
The Bears never faced those problems during the 1980s, when they routinely enjoyed ratings between 35 and 40 and shares in the high 60s.
For the sake of comparison, the Bears’ recent Monday night numbers–which had been huge locally–aren’t included in this study because the Bears won’t make a Monday appearance this season, another byproduct of their poor play.
That leaves the Bears with only Sundays this season. They hit one of their all-time lows with an 11.4 rating/22 share for their Sept. 27 game against Minnesota. They encountered formidable competition that day with the Cubs scratching for a playoff spot in the season finale against Houston.
The Cubs, however, were finished Oct. 11 when the Bears delivered another shanked punt with a 13.3 rating/29 share for their loss at Arizona.
The Bears bounced back with their highest rating of the season the following week, a 22.5 rating/46 share for their victory over Dallas, which featured popular John Madden as a color commentator.
Yet the ratings dropped the following Sunday, to 19.6/38, for the Bears’ victory at Tennessee. Two straight wins weren’t enough to start the bandwagon.
“We hardly had any Bears calls,” Mike North said of a call-in show he did with Walter Payton on Bears-intensive WSCR after the Tennessee game. “A few years ago it was all Bears. It’s a weird thing right now. There’s a malaise with the Bears.”
The Bears are hoping the numbers will start to rebound with Sunday’s game against St. Louis now that the cold winds have kicked in. The balmy fall had people spending more time outside, which is one of the reasons being used to explain the ratings decline.
There’s some spin control and some reality involved in that explanation. Certainly the Cubs’ playoff push had an effect; it gave Chicago sports fans an alternative in September. And then there’s the decline of overall network ratings. The advent of cable, satellite television and the Internet offers viewers more options in the media age. Network football ratings as a whole are off more than 10 percent since 1994.
“I don’t expect that we’ll ever hit the numbers we had in the ’80s,” Ken Valdiserri, the Bears’ director of marketing and broadcasting, conceded. “You can only split the pie so many ways.”
Still, such NFL cities as Denver (37/66) and Dallas (38/66) continue to register the huge numbers the Bears used to hit. After all the spinning is done, there seems to be one bottom line: Success on the airwaves is directly affected by success on the field.
“When you’ve got a hot team, you can be the village idiot and still take advantage,” said Weezie Kramer, WMAQ’s vice president and general manager. “When they’re not hot, it gets a lot harder.”
The current apathy toward the Bears goes beyond wins and losses. Even when the Bears were bad in the 1960s and 1970s, they had players to watch–Gale Sayers, Dick Butkus, Payton. The current group, mostly faceless, is unappealing to the fans.
“You still have the die-hard fans with the Bears tattoos,” said Corey McPherrin of WFLD-Ch. 32, the Fox affiliate carrying most of the team’s games. “But the average fan runs hot and cold. It’s pretty cold right now.”
Make no mistake: The Bears still are big in this market. Even with the ratings slumping, Bears games always rank as one of the most-watched shows of any week.
But the Bears averaging “only” a 16.9 rating is like Michael Jordan averaging “only” 20 points per game. It’s good for most, but terrible for them.
WFLD, which has carried seven of the eight Bears games this year, banks on Jordan-like numbers from the Bears to sell advertising for the telecasts. Station officials did not return phone calls for this story, but industry sources believe WFLD is taking a hit this year.
The Bears’ sagging ratings mean WFLD probably won’t be able to reach figures guaranteed to advertisers as part of their rate package, sources say. As a result, WFLD will have to offer “make-goods” to advertisers, allowing them to run spots in other programming to make up for the ratings shortfall.
One local ad executive said: “Now instead of having to sell, you have to give the advertiser a `make-good.’ You don’t want to be in that situation.”
WMAQ-AM 670 also is losing money on the Bears even though its audience might be more stable. Radio ratings are harder to quantify, but there’s a school of thought that if fans aren’t watching the game on television, they still listen on radio while working in the garage or driving the car.
That’s a plus for WMAQ. The minus is that audiences still aren’t as large as they would be if the Bears were a winner. That means advertisers aren’t as likely to come along for the ride.
WMAQ is in the second year of a three-year deal with the Bears, with annual rights fees a reported $5.5 million. The station outbid longtime incumbent WGN for the broadcasts, and in the words of one radio insider, “When you take away, you overpay.”
WMAQ’s Kramer won’t get into the financial aspects of the deal, but sources say the station’s shortfall exceeds seven figures. She does concede that there has been an erosion in ad sales this year, which she says is “part our fault and part team performance.”
Kramer, however, maintains the Bears deal has been good for the station, exposing WMAQ to more listeners.
“Have I gotten the return I wanted? No,” Kramer said. “But I believe over time, I will.”
That’s only if WMAQ reups with the Bears. Negotiations for a renewal are expected to begin shortly. The Bears may well have to take less money for their radio rights even with an anticipated strong bid from WGN.
Kramer set the tone when she said, “I bought a new house, and I’d like to hang out with the neighbors. But if the assessments go up, I’ll have to move.”
Valdiserri says the Bears are happy with WMAQ, but for the first time in a long time, the team isn’t operating from a position of strength. That could change if the Bears can build on their modest two-game winning streak against a favorable November schedule. There’s no substitute for winning to build interest.
But if Erik Kramer can’t play and the Bears start to lose again, the ratings dive will get even deeper.
