Advertisement

World Series Draws Record Low Ratings

Share
Associated Press

The Bay Area World Series was a flop on television, as ratings plunged to their lowest levels in at least 21 years, and maybe ever.

Oakland’s four-game sweep of the San Francisco Giants on ABC averaged a 16.4 rating, according statistics released Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research.

A 16.4 rating means that the Series was being watched by 16.4% of the nation’s 93 million-plus television households.

Advertisement

Nielsen, which has been keeping ratings since 1950, said it was the lowest numbers since at least 1968, but that it would take additional research to determine if the ratings were the lowest ever.

Game 4 Saturday night was the lowest-rated prime-time World Series game ever, getting a 14.7 rating and a 28 share. It was outdrawn by three programs on NBC: “Golden Girls,” “Empty Nest” and “Hunter.”

This year’s rating was 28.4% less than the 22.9 rating of the 1984 World Series between the Detroit Tigers and the San Diego Padres. The Bay Area Series got a 29 share, meaning that fewer than three of 10 sets on at the time had baseball tuned in.That’s 25.6% less than the previous 21-year-low low of 29, set last year.

Before this year, the lowest-rated prime-time game was in 1987, when Game 1 between the St. Louis Cardinals and Minnesota Twins got a 19.2 rating.

Game 1 this year got a 16.2 rating and a 30 share. It improved to a 17.4 rating and a 28 share for Game 2 and, after a 10-day delay caused by an earthquake, a 17.5 rating and a 32 share for Game 3.

Dennis Swanson, the president of ABC Sports, refused to discuss the ratings, ABC spokesman Mark Mandel said. The network just completed its six-year, $575 million contract with baseball.

Advertisement

“It shouldn’t surprise anyone,” Barry Kaplan, a television industry analyst at Goldman Sachs & Co, said of the ratings. “Nobody expected it to be a barn-burner being from two cities in the same area and neither New York or Los Angeles involved. On top of which, it was lopsided competitively and top of which, it was interrupted by an earthquake. I would have been shocked if it wasn’t the lowest-rated in a long time.”

Advertisement