Twins broadcast partner FS North last season "lost viewers for the fourth consecutive year," as the team "suffered their fourth consecutive losing season" on the field, too, according to Phil Miller of the Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE. The average Twins game on FS North "now routinely attracts barely more" than 40% of the audience it "enjoyed five years ago." Twins Senior Dir of Corporate Communications & Broadcasting Kevin Smith: "I don’t think anyone could be too surprised. When the team wins, more people watch. It’s pretty simple. Fox Sports does a great job. They’re doing what they can, and beyond, to hold viewers, but it all comes down to wins and losses." Nielsen data shows that the Twins’ average rating for a primetime game was 3.64, down 13.9% "from the 4.23 rating that FSN drew" in '13. Roughly 64,000 Twin Cities households "tuned in to an average game," a 57.9% drop from the 152,000 households who were watching in '10. The numbers "likely reflect a growing indifference toward the non-contending team." Still, "even with the decline, Twins games routinely drew bigger audiences than the entertainment programming opposite them." Smith; "I can count on one hand the number of prime-time network shows that out-rated us. It’s all relative. We’d like our numbers to be better, but in boxcar numbers, we still had double the audience that most network programs get" (Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE, 11/23).
