Stanley Cup Finals Game Five Up In Viewers, Flat In Ratings

Viewership Up 4% For Stanley Cup Finals Game Five

Wednesday’s Oilers-Hurricanes Stanley Cup Finals Game Five on NBC earned a 2.5/4 final Nielsen rating, even with the comparable 2.5/5 drawn by ABC for Flames-Lightning Game Five in ’04. Wednesday’s game drew 3,850,239 viewers, up 4% from the 3,686,673 that watched the Game Five on ABC in ’04. NBC’s three Stanley Cup Finals telecasts have averaged a 2.0/4 final rating, even with the 2.0/4 ABC earned in ’04 for Games Three, Four and Five. NBC has averaged 7% more viewers per game than ABC in ’04 (THE DAILY).

NOT TAKING A FLYER: Flyers Chair Ed Snider — who is Chair of Comcast-Spectacor, a subsidiary of Comcast, which owns OLN — said of the NHL’s ratings performance, “When we first started on ESPN2, we had low ratings, too. Plus, OLN is now in six million more homes (from last year at this time), and I think much of that has to do with the NHL, and I think it will continue to expand. I'm very happy with OLN and NBC. ... It obviously hurts not to have Canada's ratings mentioned, but it also hurts when you don't have a team like the Rangers, Flyers or Red Wings in the final. The ratings would be much higher. But it's hard for hockey to get great national ratings. We depend tremendously on local ratings” (PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, 6/16).