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Saturday, May 07, 2011
World Series: top diminished sporting event
ell into the 1970s, the World Series was still the premier sporting event in the U.S., with the Super Bowl in its infancy. The series routinely drew 40 million viewers with television ratings typically in the high 20s and into the 30s. NFL games were never scheduled on days of World Series games, and on the one occasion - in 1986 when a Monday Night Football game went up against Game 7 of the series delayed by rain - it was crushed by baseball (38.9 to 8.8).
That’s no longer the case, with baseball as a sport on the wane, particularly after the 1994 players’ strike that forced the cancellation of the World Series. The series’ TV ratings have not crested 20 since then and in two of the last three years (2008 and 2010), the series hit a nadir, both registering just single-digit ratings (8.4). Only roughly 13 million viewers watched these series, less than a third of the audience in the 1970s, despite a population increase of over 100 million in the meantime. The last series to have as many as 20 million viewers was 2004, when the Red Sox won their first championship in 86 years.
Last year’s Game 4 between the Rangers and Giants was beaten on TV by a regular-season Sunday night NFL game. But more ignominiously, more people watched an episode of “Dancing With the Stars” than saw the Game 5 clincher as the Giants won their first World Series since 1954.
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