NBC: XFL simply a flop

Howard Fendrich

Wednesday, April 25, 2001 | 10:38 a.m.

NEW YORK -- Dick Ebersol thought he had a winning idea -- partner with pal Vince McMahon of World Wrestling Federation fame to start the first big sports league with a network owner.

The NBC Sports chairman was way off the mark.

The venture lost tens of millions of dollars as XFL telecasts set record lows for prime-time ratings, and NBC -- burdened by disappointed affiliates -- probably will announce within the next week that it will stop airing games.

"The future on NBC is undecided," XFL president Basil DeVito said.

So is the future of the XFL, because its other network broadcaster, UPN, also isn't sure it wants to air games next year, which could sound the league's death knell.

"There are some fairly significant issues that would prevent a second year on UPN," said Adam Ware, the network's chief operating officer. "As to whether or not we can figure out a way to address them, I don't have that answer.

"As you look toward next year, it becomes even harder to do because you're going back to the same category of advertisers and have to convince them to come back. The damage done by the negative press and by the problems NBC affiliates had may be too much at the end of the day to say that a second season is going to happen."

DeVito said the league wouldn't be able to continue with only a cable TV deal.

Despite many adjustments during the season, very little worked for the XFL between the much-hyped and well-rated season opener and Saturday night's championship game, watched by about 75 percent fewer people.

The final game's national rating was a 2.1, tying for 93rd place among prime-time shows last week and lower than anything else on the four major networks. Each rating point represents a little more than 1 million TV homes.

The league didn't seem to be able to decide whether it wanted to be more about sport or spectacle.

Early games had lascivious cheerleader shots, anti-NFL bluster from WWF types, sophomoric double entendres and screaming announcers, who sounded more like shills than analysts.

By the end, most of that nonsense was gone. Although the quality of the football might have improved during the season, it was telling that the league's MVP, Tommy Maddox, threw more than twice as many interceptions as touchdowns during a brief NFL career.

On the other hand, at least nine XFL players have signed NFL contracts and dozens could follow as NFL teams acquire free agents to fill training camp rosters.

Back in November, NBC's game plan for the XFL was clear: Use McMahon's promotional skills to draw young male viewers that advertisers crave, and air games on Saturdays, which generally have poor TV ratings.

But the XFL never made for must-see TV. Embarrassingly, its ratings on NBC were about 30 percent lower than the network drew on Saturday nights in January by broadcasting movies.

"We have delivered approximately 50 percent of the audience that we hoped to deliver," DeVito said, "and that would be about the biggest disappointment so far."

The upshot: The league sold only about two-thirds of its commercial time on NBC, UPN and cable channel TNN, with the rest given to sponsors for free to make up for the low ratings.

At stadiums, the eight-team league says it sold about 1 million tickets, but the championship game drew a crowd of only 24,153 to the 90,000-seat Los Angeles Coliseum.

NBC has plenty of reasons to accept a loss on its XFL misadventure and move on.

The entertainment division doesn't want to suffer through another few months of unsellable ad space in prime time, and the sports division can't fit the XFL on weekend afternoons filled with golf or the NBA. The network also isn't going to try shoehorning the product onto cable outlets CNBC or MSNBC.

"We will make a final evaluation in the weeks ahead," NBC Sports vice president Kevin Sullivan said Tuesday.

There were problems almost from the start.

The inaugural telecast was a ratings success but a critical failure. Then changes followed, including shuffling announcers and eliminating disorienting overhead camera angles.

The XFL sped up games after a double-overtime contest in Week 2 caused a 45-minute delay starting "Saturday Night Live." Other rules changes came as late as the playoffs, and tinkering with the production side never ceased.