ESPN averaged 4.7 million viewers for Sunday night’s 10-inning Yankees-Red Sox matchup, marking the net’s best “Sunday Night Baseball” audience since the same matchup got 5.3 million viewers on June 3, 2007. Compared to the same matchup on the same weekend last year, the telecast was up 35% from 3.5 million viewers. Meanwhile, Fox averaged 4.1 million viewers for its Saturday regional MLB coverage, which featured Yankees-Red Sox in 81% of markets, marking the net’s most-viewed non-primetime MLB regular-season telecast since July 5, 2008, when Yankees-Red Sox was also the featured matchup. MLB Network also televised Friday night’s game, averaging 563,00 viewers, which marks the net’s most-viewed game of the season and second all-time behind Nationals P Stephen Strasburg’s MLB debut last year. The game led MLB Network to its best primetime audience ever (THE DAILY). In Albany, Pete Dougherty noted the rating on Sunday night "likely was helped by the absence of the NFL's Hall of Fame game, scheduled to air on NBC but canceled because of the league's lockout" (TIMESUNION.com, 8/8).
PLAYING IT SAFE: In N.Y., Bob Raissman writes "big, risky opinions" were part of Bobby Valentine's "style, part of the attraction." But since moving into ESPN's "SNB" booth at this beginning of the season, that "has not been the case." If anything, Valentine "has pulled back, taken a more conservative approach." That is "not to say his analysis hasn't been insightful." Raissman: "Maybe our expectations for Valentine were too high. His fearless approach -- always on display in the studio -- has turned cautious." He "demonstrated this Sunday night in the second inning of Yankees-Red Sox." Play-by-play announcer Dan Shulman asked Valentine who will be the Yankees' No. 2 starter in the postseason, and Valentine responded, "I would do as Joe Girardi will do and play this entire season out and go with your hot hand toward the last three weeks of the season." Raissman notes Valentine "didn't name a name," and instead "rubber-stamped what he identified as Girardi's plan." He "took the easy way out." Maybe he was "concerned that if he picked a 'No. 2' on national TV," he would have been "accused of generating a headline at Girardi's expense" (N.Y. DAILY NEWS, 8/9).
