Baseball-Almanac.com has an interesting history of All-Star Game ratings since 1967.
As you can see, the game used to do a monster rating, pulling in 50 shares on a regular basis. Even as late as 1982, it still did a 44 share.
People really did stop what they were doing to watch the game.
The advent of cable, giving viewers more choices, saw the ratings start to erode in the mid-80s. The last time the game did a double-digit rating was in 2001, when Fox pulled an 11.0.
| 1967 | NBC | 25.6 (rating) | 50 (share) | 14,050,000 (households) | Not Available (viewers) |
| 1968 | NBC | 25.8 | 49 | 14,450,000 | Not Available |
| 1969 | NBC | 15.1 | 42 | 8,610,000 | Not Available |
| 1970 | NBC | 28.5 | 54 | 16,670,000 | Not Available |
| 1971 | NBC | 27.0 | 50 | 16,230,000 | Not Available |
| 1972 | NBC | 22.9 | 43 | 14,220,000 | 26,300,000 |
| 1973 | NBC | 23.8 | 45 | 15,420,000 | 27,600,000 |
| 1974 | NBC | 23.4 | 44 | 15,490,000 | Not Available |
| 1975 | NBC | 21.5 | 41 | 14,730,000 | 28,170,000 |
| 1976 | ABC | 27.1 | 53 | 18,680,000 | 36,330,000 |
| 1977 | NBC | 24.5 | 45 | 17,440,000 | 31,000,000 |
| 1978 | ABC | 26.1 | 47 | 19,030,000 | 35,529,000 |
| 1979 | NBC | 24.4 | 45 | 18,180,000 | 31,980,000 |
| 1980 | ABC | 26.8 | 46 | 20,450,000 | 36,270,000 |
| 1981 | NBC | 20.1 | 36 | 15,640,000 | Not Available |
| 1982 | ABC | 25.0 | 44 | 20,380,000 | 34,120,000 |
| 1983 | NBC | 21.5 | 39 | 17,910,000 | 27,190,000 |
| 1984 | ABC | 20.1 | 35 | 16,840,000 | 28,500,000 |
| 1985 | NBC | 20.5 | 36 | 17,400,000 | 28,210,000 |
| 1986 | ABC | 20.3 | 35 | 17,440,000 | 28,375,000 |
| 1987 | NBC | 18.2 | 37 | 15,910,000 | 24,295,000 |
| 1988 | ABC | 20.4 | 33 | 18,070,000 | 29,526,000 |
| 1989 | NBC | 18.2 | 33 | 16,450,000 | 25,840,000 |
| 1990 | CBS | 16.2 | 33 | 14,940,000 | 24,365,000 |
| 1991 | CBS | 17.4 | 32 | 16,200,000 | 24,670,000 |
| 1992 | CBS | 14.9 | 27 | 13,720,000 | 21,981,000 |
| 1993 | CBS | 15.6 | 28 | 14,550,000 | 22,306,000 |
| 1994 | NBC | 15.7 | 28 | 14,790,000 | 22,015,000 |
| 1995 | ABC | 13.9 | 25 | 13,260,000 | 20,163,000 |
| 1996 | NBC | 13.2 | 23 | 12,690,000 | 18,479,000 |
| 1997 | FOX | 11.8 | 21 | 11,420,000 | 16,723,000 |
| 1998 | NBC | 13.3 | 25 | 13,026,000 | 18,970,000 |
| 1999 | FOX | 12.0 | 22 | 11,890,000 | 17,640,000 |
| 2000 | NBC | 10.1 | 18 | 10,167,000 | 14,714,000 |
| 2001 | FOX | 11.0 | 19 | 11,198,000 | 16,029,000 |
| 2002 | FOX | 9.5 | 17 | 10,046,000 | 14,653,000 |
| 2003 | FOX | 9.5 | 17 | 10,156,000 | 13,810,000 |
| 2004 | FOX | 8.8 | 15 | 9,573,000 | 13,995,000 |
| 2005 | FOX | 8.1 | 14 | 8,884,000 | 12,330,000 |
| 2006 | FOX | 9.3 | 16 | 10,301,000 | 14,424,000 |
| 2007 | FOX | 8.4 | 15 | 9,343,000 | 12,530,000 |
| 2008 | FOX | 9.3 | 16 | 10,441,000 | 14,540,000 |
| 2009 | FOX | 8.9 | 15 | 10,754,230 | 14,610,000 |
| 2010 | FOX | 7.5 | 13 | 8,692,500 | 12,100,000 |
| 2011 | FOX | 6.9 | 12 | 7,712,000 | 11,000,000 |
| 2012 | FOX | 6.8 | 12 | 6,743,724 | 10,900,000 |
The tie was the end for the ASG.
I wrote a post on my blog about 2 years ago saying they should just scrap it: http://stholeary.blogspot.com/2011/07/time-to-end-mlb-all-star-game.html