Is baseball going the way of roller derby? It’s heading that way:
For the second year in a row, professional football leads baseball by 2-to-1 (30% to 15%) as the nation's favorite sport. Nineteen years ago, in 1985, when The Harris Poll(R) first asked this question, professional football and baseball were in a virtual tie (24% to 23%) for first place.Since younger Americans prefer the NFL over MLB by a wide margin, that gap is only going to grow. Last week, more Americans watched the third Presidential debate than baseball. And here’s a sobering stat from today’s Drudge Report:
FLASH: ABC 'DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES' BEAT YANKEES/REDSOCKS [sic] IN OVERNIGHTS, NIELSEN REPORTS... 15.5 RATING/21 SHARE FOR 'WIVES' TOP OF NIGHT OVER FOX BASEBALL AVG. 11.4/19...“America’s pastime” beaten by suburban hausfraus. That’s pitiful. But then what do all these so-called numbers mean anyway? Kids are still buying baseball caps, right? Right?
5 comments:
In football, each game is a huge battle, and then a week goes by to rest and recuperate. In baseball, there's a game almost every day. Not every game is important. Some are exciting, others not. But at the end of the season, you look back and realize you had a lot of fun.
What I'm saying is: Baseball is a lot like a good marriage with its daily ups and downs. Football is like a series of one-night stands on the weekend, sex with no commitment. Which one do you think the average American guy prefers?
The Yankees had a 3-0 lead in the series. The game lasted 5 hours; "Desperate Housewives" lasts one. Meanwhile, NFL broadcast ratings have plunged since 1985. Super Bowl ratings have dropped 25% since the late 70s. Comparing a 162-game season to a 16-game season in terms of single-game interest is nonsense. So's comparing the middle of a 7-game playoff with a one-and-out football format, or a once-every-four-years debate.
But a POLL says the NFL's "winning" the race between two separate sports whose seasons overlap to a small degree! It must be so! After all, it's a number. Oh, and Nielsen ratings, those are great numbers, too. The last episode of "Friends" did worse than that last episode of "Seinfeld," which did worse than the last episode of "M*A*S*H".... but lower baseball ratings mean the sport's hemorrhaging fans! Lower NFL ratings mean no such thing. Oh, wait, one small problem: baseball's ratings are going UP, not down.
http://www.sportsbusinessnews.com/sections/index.asp?sId=6&selectDate=10/5/2004 -
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/martzke/2003-10-07-martzke_x.htm
And the fact that the country was irate about the baseball union's strike, but didn't care about football's? That's not quantified as an official NUMBER. Dismissed!
Remember when the NBA was burying baseball's corpse a couple of years ago? Even while the highest-rated NBA finals ever was less-viewed than the lowest-rated World Series ever? This isn't anything like that. This is a commissioned poll, by God.
Too bad Pedro Martinez can't strip to a sports bra-- the buzz is that U.S.A. women's soccer is going to be HUGE.
Sorry, that was from me.
--Des
Heh heh heh - just like pulling the string on a doll
Dance for me, little man! Dance!
"Dance," eh? How many years in a row are you going to flog this "sports/ratings" received wisdom in the face of direct contradiction? And if you've heard this from me before, it's because I have a bottomless and abiding faith that one day it WILL penetrate. Two, three, cha cha cha.
Anyway, be nice, or I'll be forced to get tough and re-invoke your unusual pet theory that any Democrats who question the validity of the 2000 Florida election are crybabies, whereas the panhandle was the victim of a vicious media conspiracy. Sure, F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." But you have to let this bone go, before you end up in "Scanners" territory.
--Des
Right on baseball. Right on polling. Right on voting irregularities. Right for America.
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