From the broadcast booth at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, Jim Nantz is talking bedding. It's midway through the fourth quarter of the Oct. 27 NFL game between the Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars on Thursday Night Football. Along with his colleague Phil Simms, Nantz is calling the game for the NFL Network. The game's a disaster—except for Titans fans—full of miscues, muffed punts, questionable coaching, and personal fouls. By halftime the Titans are up 27-0, and the game meanders through the second half toward a blowout. With 45 drama-free minutes of airtime left to fill, Nantz tries telling a story. He explains that every morning when Marcus Mariota, the Titans' starting quarterback, wakes up, one thing he always does is make his bed, even if he's staying in a hotel room. Simms responds by telling a second story, also involving sheets, pillows, and comforters.

"This is the truth," says Simms. "I'm not trying to be funny. In college, I made my bed every single day."

With midnight approaching on the East Coast, Nantz circles back to the game at hand, complimenting Mariota. "He doesn't play like an unmade bed, you know?"

Featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, Nov. 7-13, 2016. Subscribe now.

Illustration: Justin Metz for Bloomberg Businessweek, using Shutterstock

For viewers who haven't yet shuffled off to sleep, the exchange is unintentional comedy—the weary broadcaster's version of a Freudian slip. "Turned on Thursday Night Football for 2 seconds," tweets one viewer. "Titans beating the Jags by 30 and Phil Simms is talking about making his bed in college. Nope."

"Simms talking about making his bed is a metaphor for the 2016 season," writes another.

This is the NFL on prime time: the greatest snoozefest on turf. Pro football, which has riveted TV viewers for decades, is now repelling them. Ratings are down across the board, particularly during prime-time games. So far this season, Monday Night Football ratings are down 20 percent from this time last year, according to Nielsen data. Sunday Night Football has fallen 18.5 percent. Thursday night games are down 21.8 percent. The Titans-Jaguars game averaged a little more than 5 million viewers, down 71 percent from the same week in 2015. The lackluster performance has caught various media executives by surprise. "Have they sliced and diced it too much? Is there too much product out there?" Leslie Moonves, head of CBS, said recently onstage at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit. "I really don't know. I've been surprised that the numbers are down."

For years, while drastic changes swept through broadcast, cable, and satellite TV, the NFL was the exception. Executives at the country's largest media companies could stave off investors' anxiety by pointing to the unwavering strength of the league. As reality TV faltered, as American Idol cratered, as Netflix and Amazon and YouTube started diverting viewers' attention away from network TV, football kept bringing them back. Even with the recent slump, football games are still among the highest-rated events on TV, but for some that only makes the decline more distressing.