(ariel view of a town that isn’t NY or Boston)
Despite being bigger than, say, St. Louis or San Francisco, Chicago and Houston came up terribly short in World Series ratings bragging rights (though why this really matters to anyone besides Fox and their advertisers, I dunno). From the Associated Press:
The Chicago White Sox’s first world championship in 88 years was also the lowest-rated World Series ever.
Chicago’s four-game sweep of the Houston Astros averaged an 11.1 national rating with a 19 share on Fox. That’s down about 7 percent from the previous low, an 11.9 with a 20 share for the 2002 World Series between the Anaheim Angels and the San Francisco Giants.
While the 2002 World Series, which went seven games, rated higher overall, it was only averaging an 11.0 through four games.
However, this dark cloud for Rupert Murdoch has a silver lining:
Wednesday night’s 1-0 Chicago win had a 13.0 preliminary national rating with a 21 share. It was the highest-rated prime-time show on Fox since the final of “American Idol” in May, but still not enough to save the series from being the lowest-rated.
“(though why this really matters to anyone besides Fox and their advertisers, I dunno”
I was asking myself the same question the other day when trying to fathom why the papers give so much coverage to the low baseball and basketball ratings…
the only answers I can come up with are the following :
a) what used to be considered insider media biz stuff is now part and parcel of daily entertainment and/or sports news. Was it such common knowledge, say, 20 years ago how much a certain blockbuster film cost to make, or conversely what it did during the opening weekend?
b) in the long term, plummeting or rising TV ratings does have an impact on the game’s revenue stream, which of course affects ticket prices, player salaries and movement, potential work stoppages, contraction, spider-man web on 2nd base, etc.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/story/360033p-306713c.html
I’m not necessarily bothered that reporters choose to cite the low ratings. It just seems like a self fulfilling prophecy when certain individuals announce that this is gonna be a boring World Series, complain loudly that the games ran too late…and then sneer about the low ratings afterwards.
i thought this year’s series was great, questionable umpiring decisions aside. if someone can’t find excitement in those four games then i really don’t know what to say except maybe baseball isn’t for them. the fact that it wasn’t higher rated just means more people lost out on four great games. they were certainly better than last year’s games.