The Dallas Cowboys’ 29-24 loss to the Giants on Sunday earned a 31.3 in the ratings across Dallas-Fort Worth, which really isn't ’t that bad. In fact, it’s the second-highest rating for a Cowboys game all year, behind these teams’ season-opening match-up at MetLife Stadium in New York, which was, of course, a primetime game.
The figure only looks bad when you consider that last season’s game between the Giants and Cowboys at Cowboys Stadium scored more than ten points better in the ratings, with a 41.6, making yesterday’s numbers just the latest in a season of disappointing ratings for the team once known as “America’s Team”--and, perhaps, some evidence that fans in North Texas are getting tired of their perennially disappointing Cowboys.
As Barry Horn of the Dallas Morning News points out, last year’s matchup did come later in the season and was shown on primetime, but that’s still a huge discrepancy in ratings, one that’s hard to explain away with any one reason.
Horn also shot holes in our initial armchair theory, that the unthinkably ugly start to the game led to Cowboys fans turning the game off early. This, apparently, was not the case, as viewership actually grew throughout the course of the game, which turned out to be a thriller--a disappointing thriller for Cowboy fans, but a thriller all the same.
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