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ESPN Up For MLB Opening Day Telecasts; Several RSNs See Record Local Ratings

ESPN averaged 961,000 viewers for its four games on MLB Opening Day, up 51% from 636,000 viewers for the corresponding games last season, which included two on a Thursday afternoon and two on a Friday night. The Red Sox-Yankees game in the 1:00pm ET window led all telecasts with 1.1 million viewers, up from 595,000 viewers for Red Sox-Tigers in the same window on a Thursday last year. In the early primetime window, Phillies-Braves drew 1.0 million viewers, up from 682,000 viewers last year for Giants-D’Backs on a Friday night.

LOCAL: Several RSNs set local ratings records on Opening Day. The Phillies-Braves game on SportSouth earned an 8.9 local rating in Atlanta, marking the net’s best opening game rating ever for the Braves and best rating for any Braves game since ’00. Root Sports Northwest had its best Mariners Opening Day rating since ’07. MASN earned a 4.8 local rating in DC for the Marlins-Nationals opener, marking a new Opening Day record for the Nationals. Comcast SportsNet Chicago earned a record-breaking 3.4 local rating for the White Sox opener. The previous record was a 3.2 in ’09. An extra-innings game led to a combined 23.5 local rating in Cincinnati for the Angels-Reds game. Also seeing year-over-year gains for their respective openers were the Cardinals (FS Midwest), Giants (CSN Bay Area), A’s (CSN California), Pirates (Root Sports Pittsburgh), Twins (FS North), Dodgers (FS Prime Ticket) and Red Sox (NESN).

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

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