Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Associated PressClose games, rivalries and big city teams all add up to one thing: Fantastic ratings. And MLB officials aren't complaining.
NEW YORK - Ratings are up, so is fan interest.
Dowdy old baseball has become hot.
"There's a buzz about baseball that, frankly, I haven't heard for a long time," commissioner Bud Selig said Thursday.
Ratings for the first two rounds of the playoffs are the strongest since 1999. Boston, the Chicago Cubs and the New York Yankees have played close, exciting games, drawing millions of viewers in major markets.
"Any time baseball can not only beat, but pound, Monday Night Football rating-wise, I don't think you can look at that as anything but a glorious moment for this sport," Fox Sports announcer Joe Buck said.
CBS and NBC yanked new editions of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Friends - television's most popular drama and comedy - on Thursday so they wouldn't compete against Game 7 between the Yankees and Red Sox.
"We're all running into the buzz saw of baseball," CBS spokesman Chris Ender said. "For all the talk of the Cubs and Red Sox being cursed, the broadcast networks are being cursed. This is clearly wreaking havoc with the rollout of our new season."
Baseball started slowly this year, hurt by several weeks of cold and stormy weather in the northern part of the country. The average attendance was down 7 percent on April 20 and 5 percent at the end of May, but rebounded to finish at 28,168, down just 0.4 percent from 2002. However slight, it was the fourth straight decline.
But since mid June, the numbers have been up. The division series averaged a 7.5 rating on Fox, up 21 percent from a year ago. It was the highest rating since 1995, when the first-round playoff games were regionalized on the Baseball Network and got a 10.4.
The league championship has averaged a 10.1 rating, up 55 percent from last year's 6.5 and its highest level since 1999's 10.2.
Wednesday's seventh game win by Florida over the Cubs garnered a 16.9 rating - the best for an LCS game since Philadelphia's sixth-game win over Atlanta in 1993 got a 17.4. Wednesday's game also got a better rating than 24 of the past 27 World Series games, all but the finales in 1999, 2001 and 2002.
"It's the passion for the game that we always knew was there," said Bob DuPuy, baseball's chief operating officer. DuPuy attributes the boost to "the absence of labor discord, the fact that we had 17 teams fighting for playoff spots with two weeks to go in the season and probably the most competitive division round we've ever had, plus having some of our most storied franchises involved."
Fox is ecstatic. After the network signed deals that will see it pay the NFL $4.5-billion, baseball $2.4-billion and NASCAR $1.9-billion, Fox parent News Corp. took a $909-million charge against earnings last year, acknowledging it overpaid.
That's why it's hoping the elimination of the Cubs doesn't hurt ratings. Fox also wants the World Series to go a full seven games for the third straight year.
"We probably could use nine games based on our financial history the last few years," Fox Sports president Ed Goren said.
Selig says the increase is partly because of the switch to a third round of the postseason, which began in 1995. He's not sure whether to make the first round best-of-seven or add even more playoff teams.
"There's that thin line between the greatness of the history and tradition, and something different," he said. "But I want to look at it."
Looking ahead to next season, baseball is thinking about ways to take advantage of its newfound ratings strength. Already, executives are predicting increased popularity for the Marlins.
"I think the amount of attention baseball has gotten year will carry forward," said TV consultant Neal Pilson, the former president of CBS Sports.
"We kind of experienced a trifecta this year. We had great teams with a long tradition in baseball making the postseason, we had great games and we had five- and seven-game series. The stars lined up this year, to be sure."