The Chicago Tribune's sports media columnist, Ed Sherman, recently reported on how bad the Cubs ratings have fallen since its 2008 peak. He wrote that the Cubs ratings have declined 72 percent from a peak local rating of 600,000 households to around 50,000.
This report appears to verify WGN's claims that the Cubs poor ratings made it reopen its contract with the Cubs because the station was losing allegedly $200,000 per broadcast.
By comparison, the current viewership is around what the entire Blackhawk fan base was during the dark era of William Wirtz, when home games were not televised and the team was not very good. But winning championships turned around that hockey franchise into a premier NHL club.
It is one thing that fans don't come out to the ball park and spend hundreds of dollars in tickets, parking and concessions. It is another thing that fans could watch games at home for free, but feel that spending three hours in front of the TV set is a form of cruel and unusual punishment. Bad teams and the drumbeat of losing will eventually turn off even the most die hard fan. Other media reports indicated that the Cubs were tagged with 0.0 ratings during the end of last season. That is Houston Astro bad.
The Cubs cannot get a new unified local radio-TV deal until 2020 when the exclusive Comcast cable deal expires. Until then, local TV games that used to be shown on WGN are up in the air. Other local stations are not going to pay and invest large sums of money to produce a program with minimal ratings. The Catch-22 for the team is that the Cubs have been so bad for so long, the recent ratings do not correspond to what the team wants to get for its broadcast rights. Stations cannot get advertisers to pay premium fees for poor viewership. Without advertisers, there is not profit incentive. Media conglomerates are getting squeezed by various alternative entertainment platforms. They are more cautious than ever in paying for programming.
50,000 followers may be a great figure for an internet web channel, but not for a professional sports team in the third largest television market.
The team may be forced to "buy" local airtime like those weekend information programs in order to show next year the 50 or so WGN telecasts. That means the team has to pay for the production costs, the talent, and get the advertisers and sponsors for each game lined up in advance. If some question whether the Cubs have the intelligence to run their own network, the only Exhibit of competence so far is the zig-zagging Wrigley Field renovation project, its fumbles and delays.
Perhaps it won't matter until 2020. The team may not be ready to compete by then, so if no one watches the Cubs, nothing will be lost (or gained). The theory is that once the team begins to win again, the fans will come back in droves - - - willing to pay any price to jump on a championship bandwagon. Consumers, especially for non-essential items like entertainment, are going to be a harder sell in the future because a) the economic picture is still poor; b) millennials are more negative toward their prospects and opportunities; c) people are actually saving more income than spending it; and d) baseball may not be as popular as it once was as the new American immigrant base is more passionate about soccer.
