Game 7 Defeats Emmys in Ratings

A dramatic World Series Game 7 was a good thing for Fox and baseball, but it wasn’t a good thing for the Emmy Awards on CBS.

Sunday night’s Game 7 got a preliminary national rating of 23.5, baseball’s highest rating in 10 years. The Emmys on CBS got an 11.5, the show’s lowest rating in 11 years.

The audience shares were 34% for baseball and 16% for the Emmys.

In Los Angeles, where the Emmys were delayed until 8 p.m., which was only a half-hour before the baseball game ended, the discrepancy wasn’t quite as severe. Game 7 got a 24.7/38, the Emmys a 14.7/22.

In Phoenix, the baseball game was off the charts. It got a 62.3/80, meaning 62.3% of all homes had the game tuned in and that 80% of the homes where television was being watched had the game tuned in.

The Emmys got a 3.7/5 in Phoenix.

In New York, baseball beat the Emmys, 39.5/53 to 11.5/15.

Final Nielsen ratings won’t be available until today. Same is true for cable ratings, including Sunday night’s NFL game on ESPN.

Overall, the seven-game World Series averaged a 15.6/25, which is 26% higher than the record-low 12.4/21 for last year’s World Series. The problem last year was that the Series involved the New York Yankees and Mets and generated little interest outside New York.

But the 15.6 for the Arizona Diamondbacks’ seven-game victory over the Yankees is the thirdlowest. The only lower average rating for the World Series was a 14.1 for the Yankees’ four-game sweep of the San Diego Padres in 1998.

Game 7 Sunday drew an average audience of 39.1 million. The Super Bowl in January drew an audience of 84.1 million.

It is estimated that 71.9 million watched at least part of Sunday’s game.

Besides Phoenix and New York, the game got the highest rating in Seattle (34.6/49). Other top markets included Hartford, Conn. (32.6/44), San Diego (31.1/46), and Boston (31.1/42).

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Series TV Ratings

Yearly national ratings for the World Series, as compiled by Nielsen Media Research. The rating is the percentage of households with televisions watching a program and the share is the percentage of households watching a program among those with TVs in use at the time:

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Yr. Net. Rat. Sh. ’68 NBC 22.8 57 ’69 NBC 22.4 58 ’70 NBC 19.4 53 ’71 NBC 24.2 59 ’72 NBC 27.5 58 ’73 NBC 30.7 57 ’74 NBC 25.6 47 ’75 NBC 29.0 53 ’76 NBC 27.7 48 ’77 ABC 29.9 52 ’78 NBC 32.7 56 ’79 ABC 28.0 51 ’80 NBC 32.8 56 ’81 ABC 30.0 49 ’82 NBC 28.0 49 ’83 ABC 23.3 41 ’84 NBC 22.9 40 ’85 ABC 25.3 39 ’86 NBC 28.6 46 ’87 ABC 24.0 41 ’88 NBC 23.9 39 ’89 ABC 16.4 30 ’90 CBS 20.8 36 ’91 CBS 24.0 39 ’92 CBS 20.2 34 ’93 CBS 17.3 30 ’94 No Series ’95 ABC-NBC 19.5 33 ’96 Fox 17.4 29 ’97 NBC 16.8 29 ’98 Fox 14.1 24 ’99 NBC 16.0 26 ’00 Fox 12.4 21 ’01 Fox 15.6 25

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