(01-17-2020 05:03 PM)orangefan Wrote:  I'll add to the conversation with my spreadsheet comparing ratings for bowl games under the BCS and CFP systems, which I believe I have posted in prior years as well.

Total viewership for 33 games with ten years of published data was down from 185.4 million in 2018-19 to 183.4 million in 2019-20, about 1%. For the seven NY6 and CFP games, the decline was from 108.1 million to 102.8 million to, about 5%.

For the 33 games, it is the lowest total since 2011-12, and the second lowest in the ten years looked at. For the seven NY6 and CFP games, it is the lowest since 2015-16, but the fifth highest for these seven games since in the ten years looked at.

Some conclusions - the CFP has boosted the overall viewership and value of the seven games that are party of the NY6 and CFP. This benefit does not appear to be at the expense of overall viewership, but has resulted in a shift of viewership from other bowls to CFP and NY6 games.

Time slots matter. The worst ratings year for the CFP/NY6 was the disastrous 2011-12, when the semifinals were held on a weekday New Years Eve. This year's issue seems to be related to the NY6 games not part of the CFP, which all had drops from the most recent non-CFP editions. This year saw a number of unusual time slots, including no non-CFP NY6 game on New Year's Day, boosting the Citrus, an isolated Monday night game with a poor match up to be sure, and using an NY6 game as a warm up game for semifinals being played five days before New Years Day.

My suggestions:

- Play the Semifinals on New Years Day every year. In years that the Rose Bowl is not a semifinal, play the first semifinal at 1 pm ET.
- Play two non semifinal NY6 games on nights between New Years Day and the CFP Championship Game in the same way the BCS used to do.
- In years when the Rose Bowl is a semifinal, play the third non semifinal game on New Years Day at 1 pm. In other years, play it on New Year's Eve.

If you put the Sugar and Rose CFP games on different years, you could have 2 semi-finals on NYD 4 out of the 6 years.