World Series Hits a Single in Ratings : Television: CBS’ Blue Jays-Braves series was the third lowest-rated ever--but it still did better than regular programs.

In the latest blow to CBS’ ill-fated, four-year, $1.06-billion contract to cover major league baseball, ratings for the 89th World Series were the third lowest ever.

The Toronto Blue Jays’ six-game victory over the Atlanta Braves drew an average rating of 20.2, according to figures released Tuesday by the A.C. Nielsen Co. A rating is the percentage of U.S. households tuning to a particular program. With each point representing 931,000 households, that means an average of 18.8 million homes were tuned in to each game.

Last year’s seven-game series between Atlanta and the Minnesota Twins had a 24 rating, the best since 1987. The 1989 series between the Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants, carried by ABC, had a 16.4.

This series set several marks for low ratings. It was the second-lowest since the advent of prime-time games in 1971, topping only the earthquake-interrupted 1989 series and the 1970 series, in which all five games were played in the daytime. It was also the lowest-rated six-game series. Its 15.6 showing was the worst rating for an opening game, and Wednesday’s 18.9 was the lowest prime-time fourth game and the poorest Wednesday.

Although the ratings were low for World Series games, they were high compared to regular television programming. All four of last week’s games ranked among the week’s six highest-rated programs.

“There’s good news and bad news,” said Jerry Dominus, senior vice president and director of national programming for the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. “The bad news is that it (the series) was something of a disappointment versus prior years, but it was still very highly rated and an attractive place for advertisers. I’m not hanging crepe on the property yet, although that is very fashionable.”

CBS officials could not be reached for comment. Rich Levin, a spokesman for the baseball commissioner’s office, said, “We wish the ratings in the U.S. were better, but we were buoyed that the total viewership in the U.S. and Canada was about 5 million higher than last year.”

Several factors contributed to the ratings decline. This was the first series involving a Canadian team, meaning that CBS could only count on huge local ratings from one U.S. television market instead of the usual two. An ABC executive who asked not to be identified estimated that Toronto’s presence in the series cost CBS “at least (one) rating point.”

The series also drew fire for late-finishing games, and this was also a season in which interest in baseball was down, with attendance declining 1.6% and ratings for nationally telecast games on CBS drooping 15% to a record-low 3.4 rating. During the regular season, CBS also saw a 22% decrease in ratings among men 18-49, a hard-to-reach group much coveted by advertisers.

Beyond that, ratings for all types of programming have declined over the years as the rise of cable networks, independent stations, the Fox network and videocassette recorders have siphoned viewers from the three major broadcast networks.

CBS acquired baseball in 1988 to get high-visibility programming to promote its prime-time schedule, then mired in a six-year run in third place. While CBS has since become the top-rated network, its baseball coverage has sustained a set of problems perhaps unprecedented for any network sports contract.

Its first World Series in 1990 ended in the minimum four games, costing CBS millions in advertising dollars for the unplayed games. In 1991, the network took a $55-million after-tax loss for its 1990 playoff and World Series coverage and a $115-million charge against earnings for baseball losses during the remainder of the contract.

With a record amount of baseball available to viewers in households with cable television, CBS’ regular season games have become non-events, drawing 4.7, 4.1 and 3.4 ratings from 1990 to this year. NBC had a 4.9 rating in 1989, its last season of coverage.

Since CBS became the sole home for post-season baseball in 1990, NBC and ABC have aggressively counterprogrammed baseball with made-for-TV movies and miniseries geared to female viewers. From 1976 to 1989, NBC and ABC shared the post-season coverage--with one network getting the league championship series and the other the World Series--and neither network trotted out expensive counterprogramming, because any decline in the baseball ratings would impact on the network the following year when it would sell advertising based on the previous year’s ratings.