WORLD SERIES STARTS LAST, RISES TO FIRST

A lot of viewers were gathered around their TV sets Monday night, particularly in the 8:00 p.m. hour, when the four major networks together attracted 45 million viewers. Somewhat surprisingly, Fox’s telecast of the World Series ranked only third in the hour with 11.5 million viewers. It was topped by competitions of another sort, the first hour of NBC’s The Voice and ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, each with 12.4 million viewers. The CBS comedies How I Met Your Mother and 2 Broke Girls trailed with 7.6 million viewers. The World Series took over first place at 9:00, averaging 14.1 million viewers for the rest of the evening and peaking in the 10:00 p.m. half hour with 15.25 million. Meanwhile, Richard Sandomir, who covers TV sports for the New York Times criticized Fox’s coverage of Sunday’s game. “Fox committed a costly error on the game-ending pickoff play,” Sandomir wrote. The pickoff occurred as Fox was showing “montages of anxious faces” while Cardinal pitcher Koji Uehara prepared to pitch to Carlos Beltran on a 1-1 count. But as Fox was showing a nervous Cardinals fan, Uehara threw to first baseman Mike Napoli to pick off pinch-runner Kolten Wong. In an interview with the newspaper, Fox director Bill Webb remarked, “It was very quick, between pitches, not even a normal throw over. … I think he was shocked that he got Wong.”