Tag Archives: TBS

Baseball or Smilin’ Joe? Ratings hold steady for Yankees-Orioles; surge after VP debate

Posted on by

What to watch?

Last night’s buffet table was full. Two big baseball games and a decent football game on NFL Network.

Ultimately, I chose the VP debate. I mean, this might be the last time we get to see “Smilin’ Joe Biden in that format. All I can say, I can’t wait to see the take from Saturday Night Live. Should be classic.

It was interesting to see how the debate impacted the ratings for the baseball game. From 7:30-9 p.m. ET, Yankees-Orioles did a 4.1 rating on TBS. It dipped only slightly to 4.0 during the debate from 9-10:30 p.m.

Then once the Biden show finished, many viewers ditched Wolf Blitzer and Chris Matthews and switched to the game. The rating from 10:30-12:15 a.m. was 5.4, up 35 percent. All told, the game did a 4.6 rating, impressive given the competition.

Baseball even beat football. The Pittsburgh-Tennessee game did a 4.4 overnight rating on NFL Network.

 

 

 

Wildcard winner for TBS: Baseball should stay with 1-and-done format

Posted on by

The early ratings for the baseball playoffs should convince Bud Selig and his pals to keep the one-and-done format for the wildcard teams.

While a best-of-three series might be fairer, opening with two winner-take-all games gave the postseason a high dose of urgency from the first pitch. And it carried over into the weekend.

From TBS:

TBS’s exclusive live doubleheader coverage of Major League Baseball’s first-ever Wild Card presented by Budweiser averaged 4,608,000 total viewers, up 61 percent over last year’s 2,866,000 viewers for the first day of the MLB Postseason. The average 3.0 U.S. household rating for the Wild Card doubleheader was an increase of 58 percent over last year’s 1.9 rating for the first day of the postseason.

Why the big jump? In a 5 or 7-game series, if you miss the first game, so what? There’s more coming.

But a one-gamer with all of its drama and storylines (Will it be Chipper Jones’ last game?), and you’re there.

The format sucked fans in, as TBS’ ratings are up 16 percent for the first three days of the playoffs, increasing from 2.5 to 2.9.

Is one-game for the wildcard winners fair? Probably not. But if I’m MLB, I’m not going to mess with it.