CBS Hopes Playoffs Are Bigger Hit Than Season : Broadcasting: Atlanta Braves have proven to be a strong post-season draw, but other teams pose problems--and viewership fell markedly this year.

Baseball struck out on CBS this season.

Before Saturday’s regular-season finale, the network’s 15 telecasts had an average audience of 3.6 million homes, contrasted with about 4.4 million in 1990. (Figures for Saturday’s coverage are scheduled to be announced Thursday, but are not expected to have a major impact on the season average.)

The ratings decline is the latest in the succession of ills that have bedeviled CBS following its 1988 decision to pay $1.06 billion for the exclusive national network broadcast rights to baseball’s regular season, playoffs, World Series and All-Star Game for four years. CBS’ many problems led one analyst to dismiss this year’s regular-season ratings decline.

“The baseball contract has turned out to be such a bad deal, to quibble over exactly how bad it was doesn’t make sense,” said Alan Gottesman, an analyst with the investment firm Merrill Lynch. “It’s like asking did you drown in the river where the water was 18 feet deep or where the water is 22 feet deep?”

“There’s too much baseball on television,” said George Schweitzer, CBS’ senior vice president of marketing and communications, who also cited competition from college football during September and early October as another reason for the ratings dip. “On Friday nights on ESPN, you can see the matchup we’ll have on Saturday. It’s lost its feeling of exclusivity.”

Earlier this year, the network took a $55-million after-tax loss for its playoff and World Series coverage a year ago and a $115-million charge against earnings for baseball losses during the remainder of the contract.

As CBS begins its second year of playoff coverage tonight, when the Minnesota Twins and Toronto Blue Jays open the American League championship series (5:30 p.m., Channels 2 and 8), CBS Sports President Neal Pilson admitted to the Associated Press: “It’s reasonably apparent that we’re not in a profit-making situation in baseball this year.”

The network has already sustained one loss. With the Dodgers’ second-place finish, CBS misses out on a team from the nation’s second-largest media market. Traditionally, when the Dodgers or a New York team participates in post-season play, the huge ratings from those markets give a major boost to the national ratings. Of the past 10 World Series, the two receiving the top ratings were in 1981, involving the Dodgers and New York Yankees, and in 1986, with the New York Mets.

CBS, however, says it is confident that the Braves’ national following, cultivated by cable telecasts on superstation TBS, will provide a ratings boost.

It is a hope backed by history. When the Braves made their most-recent postseason appearance, their three-game loss in the 1982 National League championship series averaged a 19.8 rating, the best championship series rating in either league for the past decade.

Two of the other postseason participants each have problems that could curtail ratings. Pittsburgh is considered more of a football city than one for baseball, and the Pirates failed to sell out any of their three playoff games at Three Rivers Stadium a year ago. And Toronto is not in the United States, so its home market ratings won’t help CBS.

In CBS’ and baseball’s view, the length of each series--not the teams involved--is what counts most, because each additional game affords the network the opportunity to sell more commercials. When last year’s World Series ended in the minimum four games, CBS saw an estimated $12 million to $15 million of revenue per game vanish.

The network has guaranteed sponsors that the games will reach a specified number of viewers, although CBS declined to make that figure public.

“If we have a seven-game (world) series and a couple of good (league championship) series, I think you’re going to see ratings that certainly knock last year’s ratings on their ear and revenues on the network side that will be improved,” Steven D. Greenberg, major league baseball’s deputy commissioner and chief operating officer, said Monday. “The reason you do four-year TV contracts is to hedge against the scenario we had last year, almost the minimum number of games in the three series. At some point, logic will tell you that will balance out.”

While CBS says it expects to sell out its advertising time, some reports indicate that the sales are not going well. Gottesman described them as “terrible.” There were also reports that CBS has discounted 30-second playoff spots by 20%, to $80,000.

To help lessen its sports advertising inventory, CBS is dropping pregame shows during the league championship series. In the Eastern and Central time zones, either regularly scheduled situation comedies or truncated versions of the popular and low-cost reality programs “Rescue 911” and “Top Cops” will air before the games.

ESPN, baseball’s other national broadcaster, also saw its rating drop 5% this season. Through last Wednesday, ESPN averaged a 1.9 rating, meaning its games were seen in about 1.11 million of the 58.6 million households that can receive the cable channel. Last season, ESPN averaged a 2 rating for its then 57 million households, an average of 1.14 million households.

“You always hope for better, and we would have anticipated a little better with our second year,” said Loren Matthews, ESPN’s senior vice president for programming. “The big jolt came last year, when we realized our initial projections were too pie-in-the-sky. We’re not surprised this year, but we’re not doing cartwheels over a slight loss in ratings. We hoped in year two, coming off the banner year we had from a production standpoint for baseball, that would carry over and turn into a ratings increase. So while we weren’t expecting miracles, it’s disappointing.”

ESPN is in the second year of a four-year contract for which it paid $400 million. Matthews said ESPN will lose money on baseball this year, but declined to give a specific figure.