NEW YORK (AP) – Last year, postseason baseball was a handicap for Fox. This year, things have changed dramatically.
Buoyed by exciting games in big markets and the rise of longtime losers Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox, Fox’s audience for the baseball playoffs is up a dramatic 37 percent over last year, Nielsen Media Research said Tuesday.
Baseball powered Fox to a win in the Nielsen prime-time ratings race last week. It also depressed Fox’s rivals; ratings were down compared with 2002 for each of the other six broadcast networks.
Poor baseball ratings in recent years created worries that the sport was declining as a TV attraction.
Baseball forces Fox to delay the fall opening of a new season for entertainment shows and, as a result, the network has gotten off to slow starts in the ratings wars.
Last Friday’s game between the Cubs and Florida Marlins drew the biggest audience for a Friday baseball game since 1995, Nielsen said. The first round of the playoffs scored its best ratings since 1997.
“You’ve got all sorts of good things happening at once,” said Neal Pilson, a former CBS Sports president and media consultant.
The playoffs include some high-profile teams with big followings, in cities that are major media markets, he said. Many of the games have been compelling and the series are competitive – and the longer the series, the higher the ratings, he said.
The prospect of a World Series between the Cubs and either Red Sox or Yankees would further improve the ratings picture. It may also give Fox an unexpected edge in its battle with NBC for dominance of the advertiser-desired 18-to-49-year-old demographic.
For the week, Fox averaged 13 million viewers (8.4 rating, 14 share), up 29 percent from the same week last year. CBS’ audience dropped 5 percent in the same period, ABC’s was down 6 percent and NBC’s down 13 percent. Both the WB and UPN saw double-digit declines.
CBS averaged 12.5 million viewers (8.3 rating, 13 share) to claim second, NBC had 10.8 million (7.2, 12), ABC had 9.4 million (6.2, 10), the WB had 4.4 million (2.9, 5), UPN had 3.6 million (2.5, 4) and Pax TV had 940,000 (0.6, 1).
NBC’s “Nightly News” won the evening news ratings race, averaging 9.3 million viewers (6.8 rating, 14 share). ABC’s “World News Tonight” had 9 million (6.5, 13) and the “CBS Evening News” had 7.1 million (5.2, 11).
A ratings point represents 1,084,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation’s estimated 108.4 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.
For the week of Oct. 6-12, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” CBS, 26.5 million; “Friends,” NBC, 21.9 million; “ER,” NBC, 20.1 million; “Survivor: Pearl Islands,” CBS, 20 million; Baseball League Championship Series: Boston at N.Y. Yankees or Florida at Chicago (Wednesday), Fox, 18.4 million; “CSI: Miami,” CBS, 18.1 million; “Everybody Loves Raymond,” CBS, 18 million; “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter,” ABC, 17.7 million; “Law & Order,” NBC, 16.5 million; “Without a Trace,” CBS, 16.1 million.
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AP-ES-10-14-03 1646EDT
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