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baseball sinker for TBS Off 20 percent in total viewers over 13 playoff games Oct 8, 2008 Postseason baseball had enough juice to boost TBS to No. 1 on basic cable last week, but interest in the divisional series was way down from last year. Facing stiff competition from the record-breaking vice-presidential debate and the absence of the eyeball-fetching New York Yankees, TBS’s ratings slumped compared to a year ago in its second season of carrying Major League Baseball postseason action. Through Sunday, the 13 games of the network’s National League and American League Division Series were averaging 4.3 million total viewers, off 20 percent from 5.4 million average for 12 games the same time last year. TBS still ranked first in primetime among total viewers and all the major adult demos. But the AL, without the Yankees in the playoffs for the first time in more than a decade, was hit especially hard. Through the first six games of the ALDS, TBS was off 25 percent from last year among households, from an average 4.78 million to 3.57 million. Last year, the three highest-rated ALDS games in week one of the playoffs featured the Yankees, who hail from the country’s No. 1 market with 6.5 percent of all television households. By comparison, the Tampa Bay Rays, making their first AL playoff appearance this year, hail from the No. 14 market with 1.6 percent of TV households. Certainly another factor in the ratings decline has been the relative lack of excitement of the series themselves. The Los Angeles Dodgers swept the Chicago Cubs, while the other winning squads – the Philadelphia Phillies, Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays – all lost just one game in their series. But undoubtedly the biggest hurdle was the competition. The two Thursday playoff games that aired opposite the vice presidential debate, the second games in the NLDS, were two of the week’s three lowest-rated baseball games. Meanwhile, the debate drew 69.9 million viewers across 11 networks, with Fox News Channel setting an all-time high and post- and pre-debate specials across the cable news networks drawing huge numbers. Too, viewers may have been too distracted for baseball what with last week’s financial meltdown and accompanying drama over the federal bailout plan. CNBC and even low-rated Fox Business News saw huge viewership increases during mid to late afternoon, when several of the MLB games aired. Last year was the first that TBS televised the games, and it did see substantial gains over the previous year, when ESPN, ESPN2 and Fox carried the divisional series. The network was aided by a huge promotional blitz to inform viewers of the change in carrier. With somewhat less promotion this year, the games may also have escaped casual fans’ notice. ***
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