It may be America’s national pastime, but it has never felt less national.
On
Tuesday night, the first game of the 2014 World Series drew just 12.2
million viewers to Fox, making it the lowest-rated Game 1 on record.
Game 2 on Wednesday night fared somewhat better, with 12.9 million
people tuning in.
For
most of the last century, the start of baseball’s World Series — with
its red, white and blue bunting and occasional ceremonial first pitch
from the president — was always a major event. The opening game of the
Fall Classic has provided some of the country’s most enduring sports
memories, including Willie Mays’s over-the-shoulder basket catch (1954),
Sandy Koufax’s 15-strikeout performance (1963) and Kirk Gibson’s
walk-off home run (1988).
The
modest viewership thus far is partly a function of the matchup: the San
Francisco Giants versus the Kansas City Royals. The Royals have one of
the smallest TV markets in all of Major League Baseball. They are also
pretty much devoid of boldface names, which may give the team added
cachet among devotees but limits their appeal among casual fans.
“We
are talking about at least one team that doesn’t have much of a
national following,” said Neil Pilson, a former president of CBS Sports.
But
in 1985, the last time the Royals played for the championship — and won
— the games averaged 34.5 million viewers. (That team had George Brett
at third base; this one has Mike Moustakas.) World Series ratings have
been in a more or less steady decline since then. The last nine years
have produced the eight least watched World Series. For stat buffs, the
1978 Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Yankees was the most
watched in the last four decades, with an average of more than 44
million viewers.
In
some ways, baseball has never been stronger. The game has been free of
labor strife for almost 20 years. Teams across the country are playing
in new, taxpayer-subsidized stadiums. Attendance is robust, helped by
the recent addition of two new wild-card teams to the postseason, which
has kept more teams alive deeper into the fall.
A
number of franchises have also recently secured lucrative, multiyear
deals to have their games carried on local cable networks. The Dodgers,
for instance, signed a deal with Time Warner Cable worth up to $8
billion over 25 years. In addition, franchises also share the pooled
revenues from nationally televised games. Over the last 20 years,
baseball’s annual revenues have grown to about $8 billion from under $2
billion.
Both
Fox and M.L.B. emphasized that the audience totals now should include
viewers watching in Spanish on the Fox Deportes cable channel. That
would add just under 280,000 more viewers to the Game 1 total.
.jpg)
