TBS earned a 2.8 overnight rating for the Royals’ ALDS-clinching win last night over the Angels, up 12% from the comparable Dodgers-Braves NLDS Game 3 last year, which did not include a series-clinching scenario. Meanwhile, TBS garnered a 2.2 overnight from 3:45-7:30pm ET for the Orioles’ ALDS-clinching win over the Tigers. That number is up slightly from a 2.1 from Cardinals-Pirates Game 3 in ’13, which also did not include a clinching scenario.
HITTING FOR THE CYCLE: The first-ever MLB postseason games on FS1 delivered record viewership for the cable net on Friday. The Cardinals’ comeback win over the Dodgers in Game 1 of their NLDS, which began around 6:30pm ET, drew 3.595 million viewers, marking a record audience for any broadcast on the 14-month-old network. The previous record was 3.526 million viewers for NASCAR’s Sprint Unlimited exhibition race from Daytona on Feb. 15. Meanwhile, Game 1 of the Giants-Nationals NLDS drew 2.044 million viewers on FS1 in the 3:00pm window, marking the net’s best weekday, daytime audience on record. FS1 averaged 3.16 million viewers Saturday night for the Giants’ 2-1 NLDS Game 2 win over the Nationals in 18 innings. The 6-hour, 23-minute affair was FS1’s fifth-most watched program ever and led to the net winning the night on cable and finishing second overall in primetime. Time-wise, the game was the longest in MLB playoff history, while the 18 innings tied a record. Meanwhile, MLB Network drew 1.8 million viewers for the Dodgers’ 3-2 win Saturday over the Cardinals in Game 2 of the NLDS, the net’s most-watched program ever. The game, beginning at 9:30pm, saw a viewership increase of 38% over its previous high for Tigers-A’s in Game 2 of the ’12 ALDS (Karp & Carpenter, THE DAILY).
ALL AMERICAN: In Denver, Dusty Saunders writes this year’s playoff coverage has “reinforced my opinion that TBS's Ernie Johnson is one of the most underrated talents in sports broadcasting.” Johnson, “known basically these days as a traffic cop during TNT's NBA studio coverage, has been superb in his in-the-booth coverage” of Royals games (DENVER POST, 10/6). In Baltimore, David Zurawik writes after watching three games, he “will take Brian Anderson, Joe Simpson, Dennis Eckersley, Jaime Maggio and the production team for this series anytime TBS wants them to call another O’s game.” This crew was “baseball-smart and broadcast-sound in a way the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball bunch hasn’t been since Jon Miller departed the booth.” There is "little showboating" by Simpson in his presentation -- "the opposite of, say, ESPN’s John Kruk.” Anderson is “keenly in synch with what viewers are seeing and quick to explain the images when necessary.” Listening to Eckersley is “like sitting in the bleachers at some out-of-the-way ballpark with an old-school scout.” Zurawik: “My only complaint: Will TBS please do something with the tiny numbers in that dinky, low-rent window that tells us where the series stands but not the pitch count? Enlarge that window and give us some information in it that counts” (Baltimore SUN, 10/6).
NATIONAL PRIDE: In L.A., Tom Hoffarth wrote the key to the chemistry between Fox Sports analysts Harold Reynolds and Tom Verducci is how after Verducci gives Reynolds his space, the “well-educated sportswriter tends to add a clever observation that provides the perfect layer to what’s going on” (L.A. DAILY NEWS, 10/5). In N.Y., Phil Mushnick notes FS1’s Giants-Nationals coverage has “included graphics giving pitchers’ ‘hold’ totals.” Mushnick: “Seriously. There is not a more worthless new-age stat than the hold. Providing a pitcher’s second favorite color would be more revealing” (N.Y. POST, 10/6).
'TIS THE SEASON: The WALL STREET JOURNAL’s Jason Gay writes, “Every season, around this time of year, the resilient game of baseball steps out of its 1978 Buick Regal in its poly-blend pants and presents a resounding case for itself.” Gay: “A languid game is suddenly injected with urgency, and a tribal sport begins to resemble a bigger, broader spectacle. Popular to pick on, baseball barges through the door.” A slow epitaph for baseball “keeps getting written, and every fall, events happen that put the wake on hold.” Maybe it “isn’t essential to chase a TV number, or remodel itself after football, or try to be something that it isn’t.” Gay: “Maybe all baseball needs is October” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 10/6). The N.Y. Daily News’ Mike Lupica said, "The notion that baseball is on the eve of destruction, that the country has passed it by, is just noise from people who don't love the game, or watch it, or care about it." He added, "We have seen the best of the sport, the appeal of the sport and the enduring greatness of the sport. Anybody who doesn't see that doesn't want to” (“The Sports Reporters,” ESPN2, 10/5). In N.Y., Benjamin Hoffman writes from an “extraordinary number of extra-inning games to numerous pitching changes to long commercial breaks, a sport that is hoping to get its average duration below three hours instead pushed past that in all 10 games through Saturday.” If a game “longer than three hours is a clunker,” MLB Commissioner Bud Selig “has to be frustrated with an average postseason game time of 4 hours 5 minutes.” In the AL, where three of five games have gone to extra innings, the average “sits right at four hours.” In the NL, an 18-inning Giants-Nationals game on Saturday “went nearly six and a half hours, raising the average to 4 hours 10 minutes.” Even without that game, the average in the NL “would be 3 hours 37 minutes.” The high number of extra-inning games “could also be fairly called anomalous.” But the “slowed-down pace of playoff games, combined with late starting times, have games ending after midnight on the East Coast, which is not ideal for a sport hoping to build its fan base” (N.Y. TIMES, 10/6).
