I wrote the night before Crowd Goes Wild premiered on Fox Sports 1 that it was going to be terrible. The FS 1 late afternoon program isn’t terrible; at least ratings wise. It registered a 0.1 overnight rating- that’s beyond terrible.
Remember Animal House:
“Mr. Blutarksi, 0.0”
Crowd Goes Wild is hanging out just slightly above that.
(UPDATE: Fox officially cancels Crowd Goes Wild on 4-27-14. Note, this story originally ran on September 3rd)
Why did I think CGW would bomb?
First, it’s centered around Regis Philbin.
The guy’s main talent is the ability to SCREAM one word of each sentence. (The rest of the words are said at a normal pitch) The emergency test alert system is getting higher ratings than “Crowd Goes Wild,” and deservedly so. Look at this quote from Variety Magazine on Aug. 13, exactly one week before Philbin’s Fox Sports 1 premiere.
“I’m sure people say, ‘Is an 81-year-old really going to bring in the demographic that you want?’ Well, yeah,” [Fox Sports co-president Eric] Shanks says. “(Who Wants to Be a) Millionaire’ was a top-five show in 18-34. Who doesn’t like Regis?”
I guess that prediction was a bit off. More numbers, courtesy of Variety:
Its late-afternoon discussion show “Crowd Goes Wild,” whose panelists include Regis Philbin, opened to 74,000 viewers on Monday of last week, but dropped to as low as 29,000 on Thursday. It closed strong, spiking to 179,000 on Friday and then drawing 84,000 with a Saturday afternoon edition.
I know it’s apples and oranges to compare page views with television viewers. And TV is king of all media, while internet is still the D list of media, but…..
29,000 viewers on a Thursday?
If this website had 29,000 page views in a week, I’d consider it a very bad week. Very bad.
The second reason I thought Crowd Goes Wild would fail is there are about 27 co-hosts on this show.
Previously, I said on Twitter that Crowd Goes Wild was in the same ballpark as the defunct Versus network’s “The Daily Line.” I said the ceiling for Crowd Goes Wild was the long cancelled TDL.
I really, truly owe The Daily Line a sincere apology. And look at Liam McHugh, he emerged from that disaster to move on to bigger and better things. Crowd Goes Wild is more at the level of The Chevy Chase Show.
Its new ceiling is The Magic Hour.
Paul M. Banks is the owner of The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports. An analyst for 95.7 The Fan, he also writes on Chicago sports media for Chicago Now. President Obama follows him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)