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October 10, 2007

The Ledger Domain

The Ratings Game

by Maury Brown

The bubbly had to be popping at MLB’s New York offices, and at the headquarters of Turner Sports. The gamble to place the Division Series exclusively on cable through Turner’s TBS channel had initially paid off handsomely. In the next few days, however, the television execs, Bud Selig and the rest at 245 Park could be faced with a bit of a champagne hangover. With the Yankees being knocked out of the playoffs in a Game Four ALDS loss to the Indians, only the Boston Red Sox remain as a perennial ratings powerhouse. No Yankees/Red Sox drama. No Chicago Cubs, no Wrigley Field, no goat, no curse. Not even a Rally Monkey.

Instead, what we have is relative market parity, with only Boston really having any major national profile. While Phoenix is a large market, it’s a recent expansion team, as is Denver. This is great for the sports scenes in those towns, of course, and great for baseball in those cities. MLB loves to trumpet the parity that has come from the introduction of the Wild Card, the increases in total revenues pouring into the clubs, and how these reflect the virtue of the tweaks to the revenue-sharing system. Steady fans of baseball can enjoy the knowledge that teams other than the Yankees and Red Sox have a shot at the postseason.

Baseball's broadcasting partners added some common-sense tweaks to broadcast times when they agreed to a new national network television deal last year. The changes helped spur ratings boosts this year, mostly by way of ESPN and ESPN2, who according to the Sports Business Daily saw a 25 percent increase in ratings over 64 games, compared to 98 games when there were more day game telecasts. ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball also saw an increase of 10 percent from the year before. On the other hand, FOX saw telecasts average a 2.3/6 rating, down 4.2 percent from a 2.4/7 for 18 telecasts in '06, when coverage began in late May, translating to a -4.2 percent decline from the year prior.

The problem is that while parity is great for the regular season, when it comes time for the playoffs to roll around, a slate populated with big-market, well-entrenched, storied franchises is what MLB and the television execs at FOX and TBS want to see. In their first dip into the MLB postseason pool, TBS has seen healthy numbers over the course of Division Series play, which is perhaps surprising, as this is the first time in history that all games were broadcast on cable—there are no over-the-air broadcasts by FOX and to a lesser extent ESPN this year. As of Sunday, TBS had grabbed 5.4 million viewers, compared to 4.5 million last year on ESPN, ESPN2, and FOX, an impressive jump.

Looking at the eight teams that made the playoffs, one can only wonder what the ratings might have been like if the Mets had not collapsed, thus possibly adding more punch with both New York franchises in the mix. However, to add a slight dose of reality to those figures from last season, recall that last year had Mother Nature in the mix, as Game Two of the ALDS between the Yankees and Tigers was rained out. That pulled down the numbers, but let’s face it: not by 900,000 viewers.