LAST WORLD SERIES GAME IS FIRST IN THE RATINGS

As expected, the last game of the World Series proved to be the most-watched game in series history, with viewers in nearly 34 million homes watching it on NBC, a network spokeswoman said Wednesday.

The previous record-holder was the sixth and final game of the 1980 World Series, seen in an estimated 32 million homes.

According to NBC research figures, the telecast of Monday’s series-winning victory of the New York Mets over the Boston Red Sox averaged a 55% share of the national viewing audience.

In contrast, ABC’s competing Monday-night football telecast was seen in about 7.7 million homes. It only got an estimated 14% of the national audience, a distinct drop from the 32% that ABC says the sportscast had averaged this season.

In Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest television market, the broadcast of Monday’s World Series finale on KNBC-TV averaged a 40.9 rating, which represents more than 1.8 million homes.

ABC research chief Marvin Mord, a Yankees fan who said he’d been rooting for the Mets on a temporary basis, said that despite the high ratings for NBC’s Game 7 telecast, video schizophrenia undoubtedly was a fact of life for sports fans Monday night.

The schizophrenia took the form of constant channel-switching, from the World Series to the Giants-Redskins debate on ABC, and back again. The early Nielsen data, Mord said, showed “there was a tremendous amount of switching . . . it’s the most I’ve seen in a number of years.”

Meanwhile, NBC said that last weekend’s edition of “Saturday Night Live,” preempted when Game 6 of the World Series ran longer than expected, will be seen Nov. 8, but not live. The producers went ahead and taped the show that was planned for last Saturday, with Rosanna Arquette as guest host.

It is not being shown this weekend because NBC already had scheduled another program in the late-night time slot.