We’re just over a week away from the final episode of ESPN’s legendary happy hour show Around the Horn. Already, countless tributes to the show have been written on this site, and countless other tributes have been given on the show itself.
Rightfully so. Around the Horn was a revolutionary program in its day. Sportswriters from across the country bringing their regional expertise to national airwaves was a novel concept. In the more than twenty years it has been beamed out to the nation, the show’s impressive list of alumni has only grown longer and longer.
But every dog has its day, and one look at Around the Horn‘s recent ratings shows precisely why the program’s time has come.
When discussing the show’s final episodes with my colleagues at Awful Announcing, one refrain rang true repeatedly. Around the Horn was simply the show before Pardon the Interruption. While the staff at Awful Announcing is by no means a representative sample of the average sports consumer, it was surprising just how many of our relationships with Around the Horn were defined by the show that came on after it.
We couldn’t be the only ones, right?
It seems we weren’t.
After compiling viewership data for both shows in March and April, it became apparent that Pardon the Interruption was not only the more popular show, but by a lot.
When looking at first-run airings of both Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption during March and April this year, PTI averaged over 200,000 more viewers than Around the Horn. Over the measured period, Around the Horn averaged 362,000 viewers per telecast, while Pardon the Interruption averaged 574,400 viewers.
In other words, Pardon the Interruption increased Around the Horn‘s audience by an average of 59% during its half-hour window. That type of jump is very rare for two studio shows airing back-to-back in the same hour.
To be sure, Pardon the Interruption has the better window. At 5 p.m. ET, many people are still making their way home from work. Half an hour later, some of those people have been able to flip on ESPN. But surely that can’t account for the entire 59% increase. Part of that has to be viewer preference, plain and simple.
That’s why one of ESPN’s rumored plans to replace Around the Horn is simply extending Pardon the Interruption into that 30-minute window. However, getting Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon to agree on that might not be easy. A new Erik Rydholm-produced show to fill the half hour is also a possibility.
Another long-term option could be to extend NFL Live into the 5 p.m. ET hour. For reference, ESPN’s daily NFL show averaged 297,000 viewers during the same March and April period (though it was bumped to ESPN2 more often than Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption, which hurts viewership). Given that NFL Live airs an hour earlier than Around the Horn, one could reasonably anticipate it could capture a similarly sized audience in the later window, with the potential to reach higher highs during football season.
For now, ESPN plans to air a 30-minute edition of SportsCenter as the lead-in to Pardon the Interruption. However, according to prior reporting, that is not the permanent plan.
Will ESPN find a replacement for Around the Horn that can attract a larger audience? Perhaps Pardon the Interruption sets such a high bar that any other show is doomed to look poor in comparison.
Aside from ratings, it seems that cost played a role in Around the Horn‘s demise as well. You’d think that producing a show that simply features four remote guests and a studio host would be relatively cheap. But per CNBC’s Alex Sherman, the decision to can the show was “largely cost driven” as “ESPN had dozens of journalists on its payroll given the revolving guest nature of the show.”
The fact that ESPN doesn’t have a firm plan to replace Around the Horn suggests there may be more to this decision than cost and poor ratings. But at the end of the day, Around the Horn‘s lackluster viewership certainly didn’t help its case when ESPN execs decided to pull the plug.
Data provided by the TV Media Blog Substack.