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Goodbye Lightning, goodbye hockey ratings.
Despite having a hockey team, the Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg market has been an NHL-ratings debacle this season. The Lightning run in the playoffs salvaged some of those numbers, but Hockey Town USA we are not.
Of 53 metered markets in the country, the Tampa/St. Petersburg market ranked 41st in the regular season with a 0.8 rating (or about half of the national average). Of markets with a hockey team, Tampa/St. Petersburg managed to beat out two - the traditionally lethargic markets in Phoenix and Miami.
Viewers in the following markets apparently like their hockey much more than those in this one, based on ratings points (one point equals 1 percent of that area's households): Houston, Sacramento, Orlando, Indianapolis, Nashville, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Portland, Cincinnati, Kansas City, and Norfolk.
Norfolk?
Notice, none of those markets has an NHL team. But all had better local ratings for ABC broadcasts than Tampa Bay.
Does that change next year? The Lightning playoff run boosted the market's ratings for the playoff broadcasts to 1.7, ninth overall. Of course, two network Lightning broadcasts, including a 3.5 rating, inflates this number, but may have turned on enough people to start watching.
Or not. Saturday's Philadelphia-Ottawa game drew a 0.8 rating, or the season average for this market, or the same as Hallmark Figure Skating on CBS.
BOO HOO HAHAHAHAHA!: When the Boston Globe's Bob Ryan was suspended for a month without pay after saying on television that he would "like to smack" the wife of Nets guard Jason Kidd and a former victim of spousal abuse, he found sympathy from Charles Barkley.
Kind of. It actually was more ironic sympathy.
"He made a horrible mistake, (but) I'm not going to dump on Bob Ryan. He made a mistake. He owes Jason Kidd and Joumana Kidd an apology. Once a man says he's sorry, I have to give it to him," Barkley said on TNT's Inside the NBA Wednesday night. "But the thing I want him to understand is, it is easy for these sportscasters to get on TV ... and say that this guy is a bad guy, this is a bad guy.
"Now maybe he'll have more sympathy for famous jocks and other famous people when they make mistakes."
SOLID DEBUT: NBC's boxing on Saturday, its first in a three-week series, posted a 1.2 national rating, but in Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg the number was 25 percent better.
This week's fights might be better - rising star and 2000 Olympian Francisco Bojado vs. William Adamyan, and in the main event Juan Diaz, a freshman at the University of Houston and 20-0, takes on Eleazar Contreras.
CALL ME AL: Showtime always has lagged a little behind HBO's boxing telecasts, but took a big step toward narrowing that gap when analyst Al Bernstein left ESPN after 24 years to join the cable movie channel's coverage. Bernstein will be Steve Albert's partner, replacing Bobby Czyz, who is in alcohol rehabilitation.
Showtime executive producer Jay Larkin told the USA Today: "We're looking at this as a coup."
THIS WEEKEND: CBS begins its second year of coverage of the CART Champ Car World Series with taped races Saturday and Sunday, but does anyone care? Last week's preview show only drew a 0.6 national rating, and 0.3 locally (or about 5,000 homes). . . . TNT has an NBA playoff doubleheader tonight and Sunday (or the second and third games in a tripleheader that starts on Ch. 28), and ESPN has one Saturday. . . . NBC hopes its flagging ratings for Arena Football get a boost Sunday with the San Jose-Tampa Bay game at 3.