Last night's Mariners-Yankees ALCS Game Six earned a
9.4/15 preliminary overnight Nielsen rating, down 44% from
last year's comparable Mets-Braves NLCS Game Six, which
earned a 16.8/28 (NBC). Meanwhile, the Mets-Cardinals five-
game NLCS on Fox averaged a 6.2 final national rating, the
lowest rating ever for an LCS. The 6.2 was down 18% from
the previous low in the '98 Padres-Braves six-game series.
MLB began the LCS format in '69 (Mult., 10/18). In Atlanta,
Prentis Rogers writes that the NLCS was down 46% from the
'99 Mets-Braves NLCS on NBC. Fox Sports Dir of
Communications Dan Bell: "It has been tough out of the gate.
But I don't think it's anything a seven-game World Series
won't cure" (ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, 10/18).
HEAD TO HEAD: INSIDE.com's Tom Bierbaum noted that
Monday's NLCS Game Five earned a final 6.3/10 rating, and a
3.2/9 among adults 18-49. Meanwhile, ABC's Jaguars-Titans
"MNF" earned a 10.6/18 and a 7.2/19 among adults 18-49
(INSIDE.com, 10/17). ABC's "MNF" is averaging a 12.6 rating
this year, down 6% from last year's 13.4 (USA TODAY, 10/18).
ST. LOUIS NUMBERS: In St. Louis, Dan Caesar reports
that the NLCS averaged a 34.2 in the local market, down
about 9% from the 37.4 rating for the Cardinals-Braves NLCS
in '96. The ratings picture for the season was "bright
overall" for the Cardinals, as the team broke its record for
locally-produced games shown on FSN, with the 8.6 rating up
23% over the 7.0 in '98. For games on KPLR-WB, the 12.8
rating "trailed only" the 14.8 mark set in '98, when ratings
"were boosted" by Cardinals 1B Mark McGwire's HR-record
chase. Sunday's "mix" of showing Game Four of the NLCS and
the Falcons-Rams led KTVI-Fox GM Spencer Koch to call Sunday
the "best day in the history of the station," as it posted a
daylong average rating of 36 (POST-DISPATCH, 10/18).
YOU BETTER NOT CARE IF YOU EVER GET BACK: NBC's Bob
Costas, during the Yankees' first at-bat of last night's
game, on the length of MLB games: "I mean no disrespect to
[Yankees DH] Chuck Knoblauch, but what you're looking at
here is part of baseball's problem. After every pitch,
Chuck Knoblauch steps out, does some sort of personal
inventory, and then gets back in unchanged from the previous
pitch. ... You put it all together, along with the lengthy
breaks between innings, and during pitching changes, and
this is how you have 2-0 games that last almost four hours.
As we said earlier, baseball's leisurely pace has always
been one of its assets. A lethargic pace is an ongoing
problem that's reaching epidemic proportions, and I think
everybody in baseball is aware of it and concerned about it.
Let's see what they can do about it" (NBC, 10/17). While
many cite the slow play, some MLB players feel the "primary
culprit" for the length of postseason games is network TV,
"which requires 2 minutes and 45 seconds of commercial time
between innings," compared to the "usual 1:45 or so" of
regular-season local broadcasts (S.F. EXAMINER, 10/18).
SWEET AT BAT: The WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE's
David Sweet wrote that baseball, "like football," is a
"natural" for cybercasts due to its "statistics-laden format
and frequent pauses." But with much of the cybercast
traffic peaking during weekdays during work, ESPN Internet
Ventures VP Geoff Reiss said the World Series "to us is even
less important than the divisional playoffs, when games are
during the day, or the last month of the pennant race."
Sweet tested three MLB cybercasts on ESPN.com,
SportsLine.com and TotalSports.com. His negatives on each:
ESPN -- "unless users are carrying a scorecard, posting
players' numbers at each position is no help; names would
work better;" SportsLine -- "layout is too busy, overflowing
with names, links, numbers" and Total Sports -- cybercast
"splits the page in two," so the "presence of two diamonds
is confusing" (WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE, 10/17).
