The AP's David Bauder noted ABC's telecast of Mavericks-Heat NBA Finals Game Six Sunday was "seen by nearly 24 million people, leading ABC to its most-watched week during the slow summer season in nearly 10 years." ABC led in primetime for the week with an average 5.5 rating and 9.2 million viewers. Mavericks-Heat averaged 17.3 million viewers across the six games (AP, 6/14). In DC, Lisa de Moraes listed the Finals among her "winners" for the week. De Moraes: "LeBron James just keeps on giving to Disney" (WASHINGTON POST, 6/15).
RACING BACK TO NASCAR: Fox' 13-race package of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season concluded after the June 5th race at Kansas, and SCENEDAILY.com's Erik Spanberg noted the results "are encouraging." Fox averaged 8.6 million viewers for its telecasts, up 9.7% over last year. But "most important of all the numbers crunching for Fox and NASCAR is the resurgence of interest among males between the ages of 18 and 34, a coveted advertising target." Fox averaged 20% more viewers in the demo over last year. Fox Exec VP/Research & Programming Bill Wanger: "We're happy with where we finished. We and NASCAR still have a ways to go, but we're headed in the right direction" (SCENEDAILY.com, 6/13).
MY BUDDY AND ME: NASCAR.com's TNT Race Buddy made its debut for the '11 season during last Sunday's Sprint Cup 5-Hour Energy 500 at Pocono, and it set a single-day traffic record with 1.1 million streams. The previous record was 712,000 streams for a race in June '08. The 1.1 million streams also was up 187% from last season. Enhancements to TNT RaceBuddy this season include allowing fans to choose from a total of 10 camera views, twice as many as last year (Turner).
LISTENERS YANKED AROUND: Many South Florida Yankees fans are "getting frustrated when they try to listen" to the team's games on the radio. The games are "broadcast on Sports 640-AM, but there was no sound at that frequency" yesterday. The station in a statement on its website said, "Due to technical difficulties at our 640 AM transmitter site, we are currently broadcasting on AM 1400. We will resume broadcasting on AM 640 as soon as possible" (South Florida SUN-SENTINEL, 6/15).
