All-Star Game Is in Prime Time, but TV Ratings Strictly Late Night

Tuesday night’s All-Star game was the least watched ever in prime time.

The National League’s 3-2 victory at The Ballpark in Arlington, Tex., received a 13.9 rating and a 25 share, Nielsen Media Research said Wednesday.

The rating dropped 11.5% from a 15.7 last year, and the share dropped 10.7% from a 28 last summer.

The All-Star game, the first since baseball’s strike last August, was watched by 13.25 million households, down 10.4% from the 14.79 million homes that tuned in to the 1994 game.

Not since 1969 have so few people watched an All-Star game. That year, the game in Washington was postponed from a Tuesday night to a Wednesday afternoon because of rain. It got a 15.1 rating and a 42 share, and was watched by 8.61 million households.

The rating is the percentage watching among the nation’s television households, and each point represents 954,000 homes. The share is the percentage tuned in among televisions on at the time.

According to Nielsen, the rating and the share are the lowest since it began tracking All-Star games in 1967. The game was first played in prime time in 1968, and all games since the one in Washington have been played at night.

While the rating was down by baseball standards, it matched the average rating for the NBA finals. The Super Bowl, broadcast by ABC in January, got a 41.3 rating and a 63 share. The last game of the Stanley Cup finals got a 3.6 rating.

With Hideo Nomo of the Dodgers starting for the NL, the game received a 16.7 rating and 30 share in Los Angeles. It pulled a 15.4 rating and 25 share in Chicago, and an 11.6 rating and 18 share in New York.