7-Game Series Helped Cut CBS’ Baseball Losses

Baseball has been very, very good to CBS--finally.

If initial ratings hold up as expected, the last five games of the World Series will rank as the five top TV shows of the week that ended Sunday, boosting CBS to an easy victory in the weekly ratings contest.

Although analysts say the network still lost big money on baseball for the year, the exciting, closely fought World Series helped narrow the losses.

“They were very lucky they were able to stretch it out to seven games,” said analyst Lisbeth Barron of S. G. Warburg & Co. in New York. “It will help.”

Sunday’s finale drew an impressive 31.4% of all U.S. households with televisions, according to preliminary ratings from 25 cities. Of those who were watching TV Sunday night, the series captured a 47% share.

Saturday’s sixth game scored a 24.2% rating and a 42% share, according to the preliminary figures.

Each prime-time Series game was the top show in its time slot and helped CBS gain the No. 1 ratings for the night, CBS spokeswoman Susan Kerr said Monday.

“It gave us an opportunity to promote our prime-time lineup, and it puts us in good position for the ratings sweeps,” she said.

During November sweeps, the networks pull out all the stops on programming to get the highest ratings. Network affiliates use those numbers as a basis for setting their advertising rates for the new year.

Analyst Barron said her firm is now forecasting that CBS will suffer a pretax loss of $75 million to $100 million ($45 million to $60 million after taxes) this year on its four-year, $1.06-billion baseball package. That is in addition to $275 million in pretax losses last year, when the World Series resulted in a boring four-game sweep by the Cincinnati Reds--and the second-worst World Series ratings ever.

The network isn’t talking about its losses for the moment.

On Oct. 9, CBS postponed announcing its third-quarter earnings, pending a reevaluation of its baseball package, which has two years to run. The quarterly results are now expected to be released either late this week or early next week.

After the baseball writeoff, Barron is projecting a CBS loss of $25 million to $40 million, or $1.65 to $2.65 per share, for the quarter.

She said the network would do well to try to absorb any further projected losses now, so the process does not have to be repeated again.

The World Series gave CBS stock a boost Monday. It gained $1.25 a share to close at $156.75 on the New York Stock Exchange.