It’s still only early days in Men In Blazers making the transformation to a weekly TV show, but based on the preliminary TV ratings for the first 3 shows of the season, the results are literally sub-optimal.
After 3 episodes thus far, the Men In Blazers TV Show is averaging 30,000 viewers, which is incredibly disappointing for a show that had so much hype. In its debut episode that aired on September 22, only 24,000 people tuned in to the live broadcast. One week later, the September 29 live episode saw a boost, which grew the average viewing audience to 42,000, but on the most recent episode, the show’s numbers took a dive again as just 25,000 people watched the October 6 live broadcast.
To put this into context, the Fox Football Friday TV show (which was later renamed to Fox Football Fone-In) that aired on Fox Soccer Channel from 2007-10 during the nascent years of soccer coverage on television (well before the networks saw large increases in the number of soccer viewers) had an average of roughly 30,000 viewers per episode. Given that NBCSN is in at least more than double the number of households that Fox Soccer Channel was, the TV ratings for the Men In Blazers TV Show are poor, to say the least.
At best, live broadcasts of Fox Football Fone-In hit roughly 60,000 viewers for its 2-hour broadcast.
READ — Review of Men In Blazers TV Show: The Mystery Science Theater of Soccer
On the brighter side, the repeats of the Men In Blazers TV Show are generating better viewing figures than its live broadcasts. A midnight airing of the October 6 episode had 60,000 viewers, while an 8:30am-9am ET repeat of the September 29 episode had 93,000 viewers.
Men In Blazers has had a cult following on social media, podcasts and satellite radio, but hasn’t yet been able to raise the bar on its TV show. One factor may be the competing live broadcasts of NFL’s Monday Night Football as well as the baseball playoffs, but Roger Bennett and Michael Davies should still be attracting better numbers given the size of the soccer audience in the United States.
