Tuesday, November 15, 2005

No Phil of the arching eyebrow – Sorry, no “Amazing Race” update tonight. CBS is hosting the Country Music Awards. What’s up with that?

5 comments:

Pat said...

Well, now we know why we got the double shot last week.

Anonymous said...

Blog on the fritz again? Oddly enough, this is the nearest TV-related thread currently accepting comments. One topic up on the page, the "LOWEST RATINGS EVER! NASCAR is the national pastime, it is, it is" item's as dead to discussion as the concept of restoring honor to the Oval Office.

Have you been sleepy? Knowing your knee's annual proclivity to jerk on the subject, I had these pulled and ready to post weeks ago:

http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_main/1,1002,272|98191|1|,00.html
The Chicago White Sox held off the Houston Astros to capture the first game of baseball's World Series on Saturday night. The race for ratings supremacy wasn't nearly as close.

Overall, FOX averaged an 8.6 rating/15 share (though ratings for the live event are likely to change when the final figures are released), far better than the 5.4/10 for second place CBS. ABC was third with a 3.3/6, leaving NBC in last with a 3.1/5.

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Wednesday night's 1-0 Chicago win had a 13.0 preliminary national rating with a 21 share. It was the highest-rated prime-time show on Fox since the final of "American Idol" in May, but still not enough to save the series from being the lowest-rated.

Chicago's four-game sweep of the Houston Astros averaged an 11.1 national rating with a 19 share on Fox. That's down about 7 percent from the previous low, an 11.9 with a 20 share for the 2002 World Series between the Anaheim Angels and the San Francisco Giants.

While the 2002 World Series, which went seven games, rated higher overall, it was only averaging an 11.0 through four games.

What? 4-game sweeps tend to score lower Nielsen ratings than 7-game series do? Nobody told me there'd be math on this test.

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One final item, in case you're blissfully unaware of the changes in television and ratings methodology these last 25 years. This regarding the World Series/Super Bowl/Academy Awards/Miss America/whatever's "plunging popularity":

1983-- M*A*S*H: 60.2 rating, 77 share, 106 million viewers
1993-- Cheers: 45.5 rating, 64 share, 80.4 million viewers
1998-- Seinfeld: 41.3 rating, 58 share, 76.3 million viewers
2004-- Friends: 29.2 rating, 42 share, 52.5 million viewers
(*all last episodes)

The results are in. NASCAR is the new situation comedy, too!

Anonymous said...

On the Congressional steroid pressure:

http://www.nysun.com/article/23147

Of course, Congress would never take tax benefits worth billions away from sports owners - plutocrats who in their day jobs as CEOs contribute millions to re-election campaigns and party committees; so, rather than dealing with the problem through the appropriate means, it bullied players and owners into cutting a new deal by claiming the law would be re-written if they didn’t.

I can’t sign on to that. Process is important, and there are things much more valuable than ensuring juiced-up shortstops can have the book thrown at them if they fail a drug test - things like ensuring Congress doesn’t illegitimately intervene in the workings of American businesses. Yesterday might have been a good day for baseball, but it was a bad day for the country at large.


http://www.bergen.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxMTQmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY4MTY4NzkmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2

How to catch up to 90-mph fastballs when the bat feels like 32 pounds instead of 32 ounces? How to keep one’s eyes open on the final game of a long road trip, especially when a day game follows a night game?

“Thank God I’m retired,” is all the former player could say on Tuesday, after learning of the sudden attack on amphetamines. What would he do now, stripped of his primary weapon? The player exhaled and said, simply, “It would be impossible” to survive a 162-game schedule.

Eric said...

Yeah, it's funny how those baseball comments keep disappearing. Must be a bug.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, it's downright weird how that always happens. It's the online equivalent of only giving one's speeches in front of military audiences. And just as successful!

But show strong bloggership! Stay the course!

And if you want to wish away facts like the Big Man, here's one to practice on: For Game 1, the World Series' lowest ratings ever equalled the #2 and #3 networks' combined viewing totals. What a flop!

Obviously, no network program will ever approach "record Nielsen ratings" again. But don't let that impede your baseball obsession. What must be so must be so-- because popular culture just isn't popular anymore.