BASEBALL POST SEASON: WHOLE NEW BALLGAME(S)

Aiming to whip up flagging interest in the National Pastime and simultaneously boost TV revenue, Major League Baseball is planning to introduce additional play-off games next season in which one more wild-card team will be selected at the end of the season for the playoffs in each league. The additional playoff tier is expected to […]

OUT-OF-THE-PARK RATINGS FOR SERIES’ 6TH GAME

A high-scoring, 11-inning sixth game of the World Series averaged 19.7 million viewers Thursday night, according to preliminary overnight ratings. (The number is expected to climb when final results are released.) The game lasted until 12:45 a.m. Eastern Time, but early results suggest that many, if not most, viewers hung on until the last out […]

ALCS CHAMPIONSHIP GAME DRAWS BIG RATINGS

Despite a blowout score of 15-5, Fox’s Saturday telecast of the sixth and final game of the American League Championship Series, in which the Texas Rangers beat the Detroit Tigers, attracted an average of 7.51 million viewers, improving on the comparable post-season telecast a year ago that attracted 7.13 million. Fox’s coverage peaked in the […]

GIANTS WIN IN 5: BAD NEWS FOR FOX

While there was considerable joy in fogville Monday night as the San Francisco Giants won their first World Series since moving from New York more than a half century ago, executives of Fox were probably feeling as disappointed as fans of the Texas Rangers. Not only did the series end after just five games, cutting […]

WORLD SERIES RATINGS: GAME 2 STRIKES OUT

Ratings for Thursday’s Game 2 of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers were again far behind last year’s Game 2 between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies. The game averaged just 11.71 million viewers, versus 18.90 for Game 2 of the 2009 Series. The final half-hour of […]

WORLD SERIES A SLOW STARTER

It may not have been on the same scale as the Texas Rangers’ loss to the San Francisco Giants Wednesday night (the Giants won 11-7), but Fox nevertheless took a beating in the first game of the World Series, which averaged 13.44 million viewers. That figure is down more than 31 percent from Game 1 […]

GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT; FOX WINS THE NIGHT

Although the telecast was blacked out in much of the New York area and parts of the Philadelphia area as well, the final game of the National League playoff between the San Francisco Giants and the Philadelphia Phillies beat everything else on television Saturday night by a wide margin. The dispute between Fox and Cablevision […]