TBS' Five-Day MLB Playoff Overnight Average Now Down Slightly From Same Point In '11

TBS is averaging a 2.9 overnight Nielsen through the first five days of playoff coverage, down slightly from a 3.0 overnight at the same point last season. Last night's coverage, which featured two telecasts with teams holding a 2-0 series advantage, was down from the same night last year, when the net aired games in which no team could potentially sweep the series. However, last night's telecasts marked the highest local rating in all four markets during any point of the LDS (Austin Karp, THE DAILY).

DIFFERING OPINIONS: In Baltimore, David Zurawik wrote TBS “came through with superior coverage” of Yankees-Orioles ALDS Game 2 on Monday. The net's John Smoltz was “razor sharp in his analysis,” while play-by-play broadcaster Ernie Johnson’s “laidback sense of humor is growing on me.” But what Zurawik “appreciated about TBS Monday night was the direction, camera work, imagery and energy of the broadcast” (BALTIMORESUN.com, 10/9). SPORTS ON EARTH’s Will Leitch wrote TBS is “still new to this, and each year has been a little better than the last.” But it is as if TBS has “watched the other, more experienced broadcasts and taken the exact wrong things from them.” TBS still “hasn’t quite scrubbed that amateur-hour feel, from the technical mistakes to the lack of understanding of the intricacies of the game, to mispronounced names to a general sense that this is a baseball production by people who don’t watch much baseball” (SPORTSONEARTH.com, 10/8).

FRAMING THE SHOT: Fox Senior VP/Field Operations Jerry Steinberg said that the net’s World Series coverage will “include a camera with replays that could generate as many as 20,000 frames per second, the most seen on Fox -- up from about 60 frames per second on regular replays.” He said that the technology “originated with the U.S. military looking at replays of missile impacts” (USA TODAY, 10/10).