text: Not apples and oranges at all.  Regular programming on pay TV, even broadcast IS falling as my link shows.  
  
  I've already explained this to you before but I'll do it again.  Right off the bat you're admitting that up to 13% of NFL games can't be watched by cord cutters.  We also need to take into account that Thursday games are atrocious in general, hurting ratings.  Assuming all cord cutters have a good enough antenna to get games, that limits their options to at most two games for the morning and afternoon games but usually you only get one game when the local team game is on.  So now we're down to at most a cord cutter can watch five of 16 games or 31% of games.  
  
  "The...platform competition just doesn't exist for NFL" I think you're wrong there too.  People have been showing for years that they don't want to sit through three plus hour games in general and now there are multiple places you can go to get highlights.  
  
  Nope, that doesn't explain any rating hits at all./s