RAVENS LOSE BUT RAVE ABOUT RATINGS

Sunday night’s televised NFL contest between the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers turned out to be the highest-rated game in Baltimore history for a regular season game, the Baltimore Sun reported today (Tuesday), citing overnight Nielsen ratings.

The newspaper reported that an average of 47.6 percent of homes in the Baltimore market were tuned to the game, which saw the Steelers win 13-10 on a nine-yard pass from Ben Roethlisberger with less than three minutes left in the game. The Sun observed that “Pittsburgh beat Baltimore in TV ratings, too,” noting that a whopping 54.4 percent of homes in the Pittsburgh market tuned in. (Neither the Sun nor Pittsburgh newspapers indicated whether the Pittsburgh ratings also represented a local record for a regular-season game, but presumably such was the case.) However, the newspaper pointed out that the game was played in Baltimore (with more than 71,000 fans in the stands, instead of in front of their TV sets), which likely lowered the ratings share.