Baseball's Playoffs Hit Ratings Home Run

baseball

Fox's sixth game of the American League Championship Series grabbed big numbers, giving it a rare Sunday night win.

The New York Yankees-Los Angeles Angels playoff game rocketed to a Nielsen preliminary 5.2 rating/12 share among 18-49 viewers -- the most-watched Fox LCS game since the 2004 Yankees-Boston Red Sox series.

For the entire LCS, Fox pulled in 10.3 million viewers, a 35% increase from the National League Championship Series on Fox a year ago -- a series that went five games. Last night's game grabbed 13.7 million. Analysts say the final number could grow substantially to possibly over 15 million.

NBC also earned a top-notch 5.2 rating/13 share for its "Sunday Night Football" game featuring the New York Giants-Arizona Cardinals.

On most Sunday nights, this would have given NBC the overall win, since this is when the network usually gets big wins with "SNL." But on this particular Sunday, Fox also had the double-punch of an early-evening overrun from its own NFL games. That early hour of NFL action gave Fox a big launch pad: a 7.8 rating/22 share among 18-49 viewers.

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The final tallies are yet to be completed. But preliminarily, Fox averaged a 5.5/14 for the night; NBC was at a 4.2/11; ABC, a 3.3/8; CBS, a 2.2/6; and Univision, a 0.8/2.

ABC, usually a big competitor to NBC for the night, did not suffer that much -- especially during the 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. time period. "Desperate Housewives" rose to a 4.8/11; "Brothers & Sisters" earned a 3.3/9. Both were at the same levels as a week ago.

CBS was below these figures -- only getting half the 18-49 audiences of ABC, but closer when looking at overall viewers. At 9 p.m., new drama "Three Rivers" earned a 1.8/4; while "Cold Case" had a 1.7/5.

The start of the weekend on Friday witnessed another strong debut of USA Network's "White Collar," which took in 5.4 million viewers -- the most for the network in its time period since the premiere of "Psych" in July 2006.

1 comment about "Baseball's Playoffs Hit Ratings Home Run".
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  1. Howie Goldfarb from Blue Star Strategic Marketing, October 27, 2009 at 10:01 a.m.

    This bitter Met fan will be checking out the ratings but not the games. In fact most Met fans will not be watching, and I bet ratings in LA will be horrible. In fact MLB could not have had a worse two teams make the Series if it wanted ratings. Two of the most hated teams in baseball face each other. Which means as of yesterday for most of the US, baseball is done. Did I mention I was a bitter Met fan?

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