YES Network's local rating in N.Y. through 28 Yankees games is down 39% compared to the same period last season and the decline has “got everything to do with the lack of star power,” according to Bob Raissman of the N.Y. DAILY NEWS. Among men 25-54, the Yankees’ rating also is "down 56% compared to last season,” while the rating among people 25-54 “was down 55%.” It is “puzzling, especially considering the Yankees’ season average rating in 2012 was 3.92, down 8.3% from 2011, and YES’ lowest household rating since 2003.” Raissman: “It had to go up this season, right?” The Yankees throughout the history of YES “have been a ratings juggernaut.” The team has “won consistently with a star-studded cast,” and “now they are winning without one.” 3B Alex Rodriguez “is not coming back anytime soon.” If he “could, he would move the ratings needle.” SS Derek Jeter, the “face of the Yankees, draws eyeballs too.” The ratings also “could be impacted because of competition from Knicks playoff games and, to a lesser extent, Rangers and Islanders postseason tilts.” The ratings also “show on nights Matt Harvey pitches for the Mets on SNY, he eats into Yankees ratings" (N.Y. DAILY NEWS, 5/12). In N.Y., Phil Mushnick notes during YES' Royals-Yankees broadcast on Friday, commentators Ken Singleton and David Cone three times "noted the Yankees had drawn a big crowd" in K.C. Road attendance is "often a topic on Yankees telecasts." Mushnick: "Odd, though, how new Yankee Stadium attendance -- or serious lack of it -- is seen but not spoken" (N.Y. POST, 5/13).
