For my MMS this week, I decided to cover the issue about the ESPYs rating. Since last year, the ESPYs, which are awards hosted by ESPN for athletes and public figures, suffered a huge drop of ratings since last year.  This year, with over 3.9 million viewers, had a 0.9 rating from adults (18-49).

Now this was a little shocking as last year they had almost 2 million more viewers and a viewer rating of 1.4. This entire concept interested me as I personally watched the ESPYs both this year and last and thought that they did a great job both years. Specifically this year, I thought that they did a better job pleasing the public in the awards. I thought that the athletes who won the awards deserved to win and they all came up and gave out good ceremonial speeches.

However, this year marked the biggest drop off in rating and viewers from any back to back award show. If I had to make a educated guess as to why the rating went down, one of my ideas would be about the wild year of sports we had. There were a lot of major upsets in sports this year, for example the patriots losing the super bowl after they were expected to dominate. Due to this, some of the Patriots fans could have purposely not watched the ESPYs or given it a bad rating when Eagle’s back-up quarterback won an award.  Sports fans are some of the most emotional people and some individuals will go to extreme lengths to show the support fact their teams. This could have also contributed to the fact that there were less viewers and a lower rating.

Nonetheless, I really did believe that ESPN did a great job this year with the celebrities they used, humor, and recipients of the awards. It was very surprising to see that the rating went down so much. My roommate and I stayed up watching and even though coming from different regions, liking different teams, we both agreed on who was winning the awards.