Ratings game

Baseball steals slice of NFL audience

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Posted: Tuesday October 13, 1998 09:24 PM

NEW YORK (AP) -- Baseball's postseason took another slice out of ABC's "Monday Night Football" audience.

The rating for the Miami-Jacksonville game was an 11.7, the third-lowest ever, 16 percent below last year's Denver-New England game. A ratings point represents 994,000 households.

That marks the second time in three weeks that ABC has had one of its lowest ratings ever in a head-to-head matchup with baseball. On September 28, the Detroit-Tampa Bay game posted an 11.1 rating against the Cubs-Giants one-game playoff on ESPN.

While baseball has eaten away at ABC's audience it still can't match the ratings power of the NFL. Fox got a 9.5 for Atlanta's dramatic comeback win against San Diego, 19 percent below the football but 1 percent higher than last year's Game 5 between Cleveland and Baltimore.

Fox did beat ABC in 13 of the 40 overnight markets, including three of the top five -- New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

On Sunday night, Fox got an 8.2 Sunday night against ESPN's coverage of the Falcons and Giants. ESPN's rating is not available until Wednesday. If the NLCS goes seven games, ESPN and Fox will go head-to-head again Thursday night with the Green Bay-Detroit football game.

The combined 10-game national rating for NBC and Fox for the league championship series is 8.2, even with last year. The numbers are still lower than the pre-strike ratings but represent a positive trend in a time where most network ratings are falling.

NBC's 8.7 average for the first five games of the American League championship series between New York and Cleveland is 9 percent higher than the network's coverage of last year's NLCS between Atlanta and Florida in the same time slot. It is 4 percent higher than Fox's coverage of the 1997 ALCS between Cleveland and Baltimore.

Fox's 7.7 five-game average for the NLCS between Atlanta and San Diego is 8 percent lower than its coverage of the ALCS last year and 4 percent lower than NBC's NLCS coverage in 1997.

The rating, however, was hurt by the two-hour rain delay at the beginning of Game 1 last Wednesday. Discounting the delay, Fox's rating would be about 4 percent lower than its ALCS coverage last year and 1 percent higher than the 1997 NLCS.

These ratings come on top of a regular season in which baseball's television partners all enjoyed double-digit gains and a first round in which all three networks increased their audiences.

Baseball is poised to cash in on its next television deal. Baseball's $1.8 billion, five-year deal with Fox, ESPN and NBC ends after the 2000 season, but baseball officials probably will start negotiations on a contract extension this off-season.

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