Nickelodeon's SpongeBob-filled NFL playoff game gave the network its highest ratings in four years
Aux Features TV
On Sunday, an NFL playoff game between the Chicago Bears and New Orleans Saints aired simultaneously on CBS and Nickelodeon, with the former being a traditional broadcast and the latter being a kid-friendly version with some jazzed-up graphics and Nickelodeon cameos designed to make the traditionally dull and needlessly complex sport of American football seem more appealing to children. From an aesthetic standpoint, the experiment was an unmitigated success. Virtual slime cannons appears onscreen when teams got touchdowns, player stat cards included references to their favorite Nickelodeon shows, and SpongeBob SquarePants would appear during field goal attempts. Also, someone on the field said “fuck” at one point, and everyone on the Nick broadcast had to awkwardly pretend it didn’t happen.
As it turns out, the special broadcast was also a success from a ratings standpoint, with The Wrap reporting that the NFL game gave Nickelodeon its highest ratings in “nearly four years.” In fact, combined with the CBS broadcast, the game was the most-watched match-up of the weekend and pulled in just over 30 million views… 28 million of which came from CBS. So yeah, the Nickelodeon version of the game apparently didn’t put up especially huge numbers when compared to a regular football game, but that’s probably only because traditionalists hadn’t yet realized how much better football games are when SpongeBob and the cast of All That are there (new All That, not the one you remember if you’re the appropriate age to be reading this). ESPN has a good write-up on how and why the Nickelodeon game was so much better than regular football, despite the fact that the game itself was apparently “terrible.”
We suggested on Sunday that it would probably be more fun to just talk about SpongeBob SquarePants than to complicate all of this with footballs, but apparently something about adding football to the equation did help elevate this thing beyond a regular Nickelodeon day.
9 Comments
Looking forward to “Clarissa Explains What a Catch is.”
I definitely want to see Clarissa Explain Pass Interference because I feel like every time I see it called its completely arbitrary.
Normally I’m not one of those types who thinks that kids shouldn’t be exposed to violent media, because I think kids are smart enough to know the difference between real life and unrealistic violence like Batman mowing down countless dozens of people with a minigun.But I make an exception to media aimed at kids that tries to glorify something that is real-life violent and dangerous.
I don’t know about you, but I would love to watch a football game where they’re dropping anvils on the players or giving each other birthday cakes with dynamite for candles.
yeah i have a bit of an issue with cute-ing up 3 hours of men giving each other brain damage.
Lol what batman has him mowing down people with a minigun and why haven’t I seen it yet?>?!
It must be pretty hard to maintain the “ha ha, sportsball, right?” tone while reporting on a well-liked and highly viewed sports broadcast.
It was better than the CBS broadcast, in large part because the announcers were all together at the stadium, unlike Nantz and Romo trying to work apart from each other and battling a delay. Plus Nate Burleson was fantastic.
Also, someone on the field said “fuck” at one point, and everyone on the Nick broadcast had to awkwardly pretend it didn’t happen.You would think they would have the game on a five-second delay for just this reason. You would also think they would have that Spongebob dolphin noise sound byte queued up for this same reason.