It Was Democrats Over All-Stars in Rating Game

The Democratic National Convention had been expected to strike out against the All-Star Game on Tuesday night television. But, like an aging hitter with one more single in his bat, the Democrats eked out a victory.

According to figures released Wednesday by the A. C. Nielsen Co., the first two days of the Democratic convention in New York were watched on television by an average of about 17.8% of the nation’s households, a 17% drop-off from the same period in 1988.

Tuesday night, the combined rating of NBC’s and ABC’s convention coverage trailed CBS’ telecast of baseball’s 63rd All-Star Game. However, adding viewership from PBS and cable, the convention audience exceeded that for the baseball game.

The Democrats may have benefited from the one-sided nature of the game. The American League’s 13-6 victory over the National League drew the lowest ratings of any All-Star Game since it was first played in prime time in 1967--14.9. With each rating point being equivalent to 921,000 households, that means the game was seen in 13.7 million households.

Meanwhile, the convention coverage on ABC and NBC totaled a 10.2 rating, or 9.4 million households, compared to the 23.2 rating that the Tuesday night of the 1988 convention had on the three networks.

But this year’s Tuesday night speeches also were seen in about 2.7 million households on the Public Broadcasting Service, 1.5 million on Cable News Network and 100,000 on cable’s Comedy Central--giving the Democrats a combined audience of 13.7 million households. That figure would be higher except that ratings for C-SPAN, a public-affairs cable network that is showing the convention gavel-to-gavel without commercial interruption, were not available.

Still, the night’s highest-rated show was a “Roseanne” rerun on ABC, which had a 15.3 rating.

In Los Angeles, the All-Star Game topped the combined ABC-NBC-PBS convention coverage 12.4 to 11.2. A local rating point is equivalent to 48,751 households.

Monday night’s convention coverage drew a 16.1 rating for the three major networks, compared to a 17.7 rating in 1988.