For baseball, it was a tie season

Diamondbacks win the World Series

World Series Co-MVPS Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling

Barry Bonds breaks the home run record with 73 dingers

All-time steals, runs and walks leader Rickey Henderson

For baseball, it
was a tie season

Viewership was flat, but flat's a victory these days

By Kevin Downey

    Major League Baseball would appear to have rebounded from three years of declining ratings, following a season and a World Series that many consider the most exciting in decades.
    But the rebound is far more modest than all the hoopla over the seven-game final match-off between New York and Arizona would suggest.
    It's a rebound only in the sense that baseball was able to retain last season's viewership levels, rather than endure yet another slide.
    Ratings in the regular season were flat for men and households at 2.0 and 2.6, respectively, and down only slightly for most other major demographic groups, according to a report released yesterday by Magna Global USA.
    Still, it is no small achievement, considering baseball's 16 percent ratings slide over the prior three seasons and the overall viewership declines affecting almost all pro sports.
    "You can look at it and say, in an era of declining ratings, baseball held its spot," says Hadrian Shaw, a sports analyst at Paul Kagan Associates.
    "These days every major sport is dropping every year, sometimes by double-digits. So, when you hold onto ratings, it’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing."
    If there was any season in which baseball could be expected to see a huge ratings jump, it was surely this one. It had rebound written all over it.
    Barry Bonds broke the single-season home run record set by Mark McGwire in 1998, which helped pump up baseball’s ratings by 15 percent that year.
     The Seattle Mariners tied the record for the most-winning season in baseball history, with 116 wins.
     And the Mariner’s star player, Ichiro Suzuki, a shoo-in for the rookie-of-the-year award being handed out on Monday, was the first newcomer in more than 50 years to hold a league’s best batting average and most stolen bases.
     The year was then capped by a seven-game World Series in post-season that was decided only in the final inning. And while the series overall was the third-lowest-ranked since 1971, viewership was up 35 percent over the prior year.
     All this paints a much brighter picture for baseball in the coming season, in which baseball could actually see the increase in viewers that eluded it this season.
     "Coming off of an enormous World Series, baseball is probably in its most positive position since the last labor dispute in 1994," says Neal Pilson, former president of CBS Sports and currently president of Pilson Communications, a sports consulting company.
    "The public feels that the visibility and attraction of baseball is up. It had a very positive year, which is sometimes a lot more important, frankly, than ratings."
     One other thing that might help in the long-term is contraction of the league.
     MLB commissioner Bud Selig said this week that baseball owners voted to eliminate two of the league’s 30 teams by next season. He didn’t specify which teams would get cut, but the most likely to go are the Minnesota Twins and Montreal Expos.
     The idea behind the contraction is to get rid of teams that aren’t pulling in revenue.
     But it could also lead to higher ratings if the league becomes more competitive, with fewer teams that have a higher concentration of top players.
     "Before you can even think about contraction, it’s wise to think that it might not even happen," says Shaw.
     "But if it does, the league is going to be a little bit stronger and the pitching might be strengthened, so we might have better baseball."

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL Ratings by Demographic Targets Network TV - Regular Season
	House- holds	Male Teens	Men 18+	Men 18-34	Men 18-49	Men 25-54	Men 50+
1997	2.7	1.4	2.0	1.5	1.6	1.7	2.9
1998	3.1	1.5	2.3	1.6	1.7	1.8	3.6
1999	2.9	1.4	2.1	1.5	1.5	1.5	3.3
2000	2.6	1.6	2.0	1.6	1.6	1.6	2.8
2001	2.6	0.8	2.0	1.4	1.5	1.6	3.0
% Chg (2001 vs. 2000)	0.0	-50.0	0.0	-12.5	-6.3	0.0	+7.1
Source: Magna Global USA, based on Nielsen data, 2001

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL Ratings by Demographic Targets Cable TV - Regular Season
	House- holds	Men 18+	Men 18-34	Men 18-49	Men 25-54	Men 50+
ESPN
1997	1.1	1.0	0.7	0.8	0.8	1.3
1998	1.4	1.3	1.0	1.0	1.1	1.7
1999	1.2	1.0	0.7	0.8	0.8	1.5
2000	1.0	0.9	0.7	0.7	0.7	1.2
2001	1.0	0.9	0.7	0.7	0.8	1.2
ESPN2
1997	0.3	0.2	0.1	0.2	0.2	0.2
1998	0.3	0.3	0.2	0.2	0.3	0.3
1999	0.4	0.3	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.4
2000	0.4	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.5
2001	0.4	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.5
FX
1997	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1
1998	0.2	0.2	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.3
1999	0.2	0.2	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.3
2000	0.2	0.2	0.1	0.1	0.2	0.3
2001	0.3	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.3
FOX Family
2001	0.3	0.3	0.1	0.1	0.2	0.5
FOX Sports
1998	0.7	0.6	0.3	0.4	0.4	1.0
1999	0.6	0.5	0.2	0.3	0.3	0.8
2000	0.5	0.4	0.2	0.2	0.3	0.8
Source: Magna Global USA, based on Nielsen data, 2001

MLB WORLD SERIES Ranked on Household Ratings (1971-2001)
Year	American vs. National	Household Rating/Share
1980	Kansas City vs. Philadelphia*	32.8/56
1978	New York* vs. Los Angeles	32.8/46
1973	Oakland* vs. New York	30.7/57
1981	New York vs. Los Angeles*	30.0/49
1977	New York* vs. Los Angeles	29.8/53
1975	Boston vs. Cincinnati*	28.7/52
1986	Boston vs. New York*	28.6/45
1979	Baltimore vs. Pittsburgh*	28.5/50
1982	Milwaukee vs. St. Louis*	28.2/49
1972	Oakland* vs. Cincinnati	27.6/58
1976	New York vs. Cincinnati*	27.5/48
1974	Oakland* vs. Los Angeles	25.6/46
1985	Kansas City* vs. St. Louis	25.3/39
1971	Baltimore vs. Pittsburgh*	24.1/58
1991	Minnesota* vs. Atlanta	24.0/39
1987	Minnesota* vs. St. Louis	23.9/41
1988	Oakland vs. Los Angeles*	23.7/39
1983	Baltimore* vs. Philadelphia	23.3/41
1984	Detroit* vs. San Diego	22.9/40
1990	Oakland vs. Cincinnati*	20.8/36
1992	Toronto* vs. Atlanta	20.2/34
1995	Cleveland vs. Atlanta*	19.5/33
1996	New York* vs. Atlanta	17.4/29
1993	Toronto* vs. Philadelphia	17.3/30
1997	Cleveland vs. Florida*	16.7/29
1989	Oakland* vs. San Francisco	16.4/29
1999	New York* vs. Atlanta	16.0/26
2001	New York vs. Arizona*	15.7/26
1998	New York* vs. San Diego	14.1/23
2000	New York Yankees* vs. New York Mets	12.4/21
* Winner Source: Magna Global USA, based on Nielsen data, 2001

-Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life.

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