ALL-STAR GAME A WINNER FOR FOX

The National League trounced the American League 8-0 to win Tuesday night’s All-Star game — and Fox, which carried the game, did the same to most of its rivals as the telecast drew at least 10 million viewers, according to Nielsen overnight ratings. That figure, like those for all live sporting events, is expected to […]

COFFEE, TEA OR BASEBALL?

Giving new meaning to the term “fly balls,” Major League Baseball’s Advanced Media unit announced today (Tuesday) that it will deliver in-flight live streaming of games to passengers aboard planes equipped with Row 44 wi-fi technology. The deal is presumably a straight programming-for-equity pact. Howard Lefkowitz, Row 44’s chief commercial officer, said that it represented […]

MONEYBALL IS ON THE MONEY ON DVD

January may not seem like the time of the year when anyone is thinking about baseball, but the Brad Pitt baseball drama Moneyball easily became the No. 1 DVD and Blu-ray seller last week, according to Nielsen VideoScan First Alert. It also debuted in first place on Home Media magazine’s rental chart. The movie, about […]

PAN AM HITS AN AIR POCKET

Television viewers bailed out en masse from ABC’s Pan Am Sunday night as the series’ ratings dropped 27 percent from a week ago. Only 6.4 million viewers tuned in, making it the network’s lowest-rated show of the night and putting it ahead of only the repeats that aired on Fox instead of the American League […]

PLAYOFFS DRAW SOLID RATINGS DESPITE CABLE DISPUTE

Despite losing many of its viewers in the New York and Philadelphia areas because of its retransmission consent dispute with Cablevision, Fox TV on Wednesday night managed to record 8.34 million viewers for its National League Championship Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Philadelphia Phillies. Joining the various commercial Internet sites providing details […]

FOX-CABLEVISION DISPUTE SENDS FANS TO SPORTS BARS IN N.Y.

Most television viewers in the New York area were unable to watch the New York Giants defeat the Detroit Lions Sunday afternoon, as the primary cable-TV distributor in the area, Cablevision Systems, and Fox TV, the network carrying the game, remained deadlocked over retransmission fees. They were also unable to watch post-season baseball games carried […]

POST-SEASON BASEBALL HITS ONE OUT OF THE PARK

Live sports specials continued to build muscle on Wednesday as 6.91 million viewers watched the New York Yankees beat the Minnesota Twins by a score of 6-4 to usher in post-season baseball. Total viewers for the American League Divisional Series game were up 5 percent over last year’s first game, which featured the same two […]

GM SPENDING BIG ON TV ADS AGAIN

After drastically cutting back its advertising as it attempted to recover from its own collapse into bankruptcy, General Motors is once again buying expensive ad placements on network sports specials. Coming on the heels of a recent announcement that GM would once again purchase ads — costing $2 million+ each — during the 2011 Super […]

HALL OF FAME BROADCASTER SCULLY TO RETURN NEXT YEAR

Eighty-two-year-old Dodgers announcer Vin Scully, who, unlike most of the recent crop of sports broadcasters, has never lost sight of the fact that his principal function behind the microphone is to keep listeners entertained, will be doing so again next year. After previously announcing that this would be his last season in the Dodgers’ broadcasting […]

RATINGS SLIDE FOR MLB’S ALL-STAR GAME

Baseball’s All-Star Game may have been great for the National League which earned its first victory in 13 years Tuesday night. Not so great for Fox, however, which saw the audience for the game drop by a whopping 26 percent from last year to 11.27 million viewers from 14.59 million. Much of the decrease could […]