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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Wednesday, October 27, 2021TV Ratings: World Series Opens Higher for Fox
RoyalsRetro (AG#1F)
Posted: October 27, 2021 at 05:11 PM | 42 comment(s)
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1. Jack Sommers Posted: October 28, 2021 at 03:06 AM (#6049520)I know it's a big country and you can't please everyone, but the late start/long game thing is tough to overcome.
It's just that you'd rather watch early regular season basketball than the World Series. No shame in that and no reason not to admit it.
47% of the country lives in the Eastern time zone, including Metro Atlanta, and another 29% lives in the Central (including Houston), and yet the endings of "prime time" postseason games nearly always run past the bed times of school children or people in the Eastern time zone who have to get to school or work early the next day. Woody Allen once said the only advantage of L.A. over New York is Right on Red, but I'd add the fact that you can watch any postseason ball game and still get to bed well before midnight.
I don't think you're wrong in these conclusions but they didn't just happen, is I guess my point. I've spent most of my life not living in the TV market of my favorite team, so I've regularly watched the Mariners, the Braves, the Twins, the Nationals, etc., and become adopted sympathizers of some of those teams. So I'm certainly not averse to watching games that my team isn't playing in, particularly playoff games.
How many of those games regularly run well over 3 hours, the way that postseason baseball games do?**
Oh, and the Super Bowl starts at 6:00.
** Okay, the NCAA game might run until 4:00 AM, given their cartoonish OT rules. But then that game's nearly always over by halftime, given the inevitable mismatch.
Just for context, prior to 2020, World Series Game 1 was pulling in a floor of 12 million viewers dating back to 2012. If Boston or NY or LA were in they'd get higher ratings, and obviously the Cubs/Indians year was crazy, and yes that describes most years after 2012. But they had 12.6M viewers in 2012, 10.8M in 2021. They lost 1.8 million viewers, and that could be explained simply by "HOU/ATL is different from SF/DET".
For reference, episodes of The Voice were pulling in 13 million viewers in 2012. Per TFA, The Voice had 6.71 million viewers the night of Game 1. HALF OF THEIR 2012 VIEWERSHIP. H-A-L-F. Down 6.3 million.
And yes, the marquee event of the MLB season is different than a frequently-airing reality show. But try telling that to the 2012 viewership. It's easy for baseball fans to say it should be different, but both the World Series and The Voice are reality competitions as far as the general audience is concerned. In 2012 they were regarded about the same, in terms of eyeballs and televisions.
Live viewership of national broadcast TV events is down across the board. It's not down nearly as much for MLB, at its core.
It's certainly not glee and I do think starting earlier would make a lot of sense. You wouldn't want games starting at 4pm on the west coast if they only take 2-2.5 hours to finish. But if the shortest they'll be is 3 hours, it wouldn't hurt. Could compromise at a first pitch of 7:30 ET.
But vi's posts get to my ambivalence. Baseball is less relevant than it used to be. Part of me is sad about that. A part that recognizes MLB's unforced errors is angry. But the biggest part of me recognizes that there is a lot more choice in the entertainment market and like every other traditionally popular shows, it turns out that a lot of MLB's market was simply captured. I worry about the future of MLB. But I worry about the future of everything. It's very likely that something I love will not be a part of the landscape 150 years after I'm gone. But that's been true of almost every type of cultural thing ever.
Fair points (and sorry my snark was mostly for Clapper, the retired guy mocking people for complaining about late end times).
I was mostly reacting to my joy at being in bed by 11:30 last night. Rare for the world series. It seemed odd then to hear complaints about game 2. Game 1, I'd have been grousing with you.
It's interesting to see my kids' viewing habits. My 13-year old is just starting to get into watching sports a bit, he'll watch a little bit of NFL football, and he's gotten into the MLB playoffs, I think mostly because he plays baseball and he is at the age where he's starting to take it a bit more seriously. But I don't know if sports will grab kids the way they did my generation.* There was a Twitter thread awhile back that made the point about the value of all the shows that previous generations were exposed to that weren't catered to them. I think of all the cultural references I got from watching stupid shows like Golden Girls, Night Court, and Newhart, that weren't kids shows at all, but I watched because there was nothing else on. My kids, OTOH, watch shows that are not only aimed towards kids, but are aimed towards their specific niche of interests - video games, Lego building, trains, anime, whatever. I think we lose something in terms of cultural togetherness, or zeitgeist, or something when we everyone watches their own thing?
*-in fairness, I am probably an outlier as a baseball nerd who can still name everyone on the rosters of the 1987 World Series
In short, more kids need to watch Night Court.
CFB games regularly run over 3 hours. The 3:30 SEC game nearly always runs past 7:00 PM. I can't find a source for the playoff games, but here's an article stating that the average game is 3:24.
https://athlonsports.com/college-football/how-long-do-college-football-games-last
Hard agree.
Yes, CFB (and NFL) games are too long and the pace is also crap. I don't like football nearly as much as baseball, so I don't watch.
Totally. Last night's game was just fine, length-wise. It's almost weird to see the end of a baseball game and not have to go to sleep immediately afterwards.
Or another take: it's nice that people get to watch things that interest them. I've seen my share of John Larroquette, and wouldn't mind having seen less than my share.
I don't typically watch much of the NBA Finals for exactly that reason. Of course, basketball and hockey are timed games so there's kind of a practical upper limit on how long those games can go. Not so much with baseball, when, 3:11 is a short game for the World Series.
I know a lot here aren't soccer fans but keeping pace up and overall time down is something the sport excels at.
There is still nothing more reliable for the networks to deliver a large audience to advertisers than live major sporting events. You can say the Super Bowl delivers a lot more, but the Super Bowl is one day in a year and the networks have 364 other days to fill. The Super Bowl isn't in October. MLB and the World Series are an easy way to get a large live audience, and networks are still eager to spend a lot of money to get that audience, because the cost to develop other content to capture an audience of that size.
It is a problem on a local level, if interest wanes in the local team. That's bad for baseball in general, as younger fans don't get cultivated as the game becomes less accessible. Greater parity is a help, but in terms of WS appearances we're at a bit of a low point. More on that in a minute.
Well there is a practical impact on fans already, which is that most of the streaming providers (YouTube TV, etc.) have dropped the RSNs. That's obviously not a direct A to B thing (the RSNs don't just carry baseball, they appear to be run by idiots, etc.), but still, it's something to factor in.
7:50 ET would be 20 minutes earlier and nobody would even notice. They don't need 40 minutes of pre-game. I'd get to watch another inning of the actual game before I head to bed.
Oh I totally agree, and particularly for people that have been traditionally marginalized in mainstream culture. Just saying there may be a bit of a downside as well.
Yep. It should be noted that as recently as 2020, TBS paid $3.75 billion for baseball. And in the original article for this thread, this is the important part:
I think the point may have predictability of the total game time. Someone shared how every NHL game last year was between 2:15 and 2:45, in length. I suspect basketball is pretty close to that? You can get away with starting that game at 8 PM since you are pretty certain it will end around 10:30.
To get at this I'm going to take the ratio of {number of distinct franchises that played in the last 15 WS} to {average number of teams in the last 15 seasons}. If there was perfect theoretical parity then in a 15 year span the ratio should be 100%, as there are at most 30 WS contestant slots in that span, and at most 30 teams in the league. (It is possible for the ratio to go over 100%, as you could have all 30 teams make it within a 15 year span where there was an average of fewer than 30 teams. But nothing like this has happened at any point in history, so never mind.) So when I look at 2021 for example, I'm looking at the number of franchises to have made at least one WS appearance in the 15 year span from 2007 to 2021, and then dividing that by 30 because there were 30 teams in each of those seasons.
It is a bit surprising to me that the high point was 1926-28, with a ratio of 88%. In the 15 year sample from 1914 to 1928 for example 11 of the 30 slots are taken up by the Yankees or Giants alone. But that leaves 19 slots for 14 more teams, and 12 of them did it. (Everyone made it except the Tigers - who made it in 1909 and 1935, missing this 15-year window - and the Browns.) It seems the way I've constructed this will get some extremes in the early years.
It dropped soon after, bottoming out in 1935-38, when the ratio was 50%. Again, in 1924 to 1938 for example we had 11 slots taken by the Yankees and Giants. But the other 19 slots were taken up by only six teams (Tigers, Cardinals, A's, Cubs, Senators, Pirates).
The next high was 75% from 1936 to 1950. The next low was 54% from 1949 to 1963. It ebbed and flowed. Up to 72% in 1954-1968. Down to 49% in 1965-1979. Up to 69% in 1978-1992; down to 50% in 1989-2003. Aaaaaand it's been in the 50s almost every year since then - it hasn't gone higher than 61%.
What has changed from 2003 onward is that we have more teams with many WS appearances in a window, but the number of appearances per team has dropped. In 1989 to 2003 we had multiple appearances by the Braves, Yankees, Jays, A's, Marlins, and Indians, for 19 slots, but NY and Atlanta were 11 of those. In 2007 to 2021 we have the Dodgers, Astros, Red Sox, Giants, Cardinals, Rangers, Royals, Rays, and Phillies with multiple appearances, combining for 22 slots - but no single team has more than three appearances. What I find fascinating is that those two lists of teams don't overlap at all. From a parity perspective it's actually a great thing! Well, maybe not for the Pirates and Brewers and Mariners and the other teams that didn't get there in either of those windows. And from a World-Series-as-building-the-fanbase-for-MLB it's not great because it's over a much longer span. And there are bigger issues - particularly length and/or pace of game - that cause pain for the viewer as well. *Those* are the things that worry me about baseball popularity.
(EDITed for a little more clarity.)
3:38 average for 9-inning postseason games would be closer to that tipping point, and of course postseason games are on national networks with other content, so they're more likely to be concerned too.
The worst game of the entire postseason had to be game 2 of the ALCS watching Jake Odorizzi warm up for half an hour.
A) Everyone in this discussion is - by rule - older than they used to be.
B) Hockey and NBA finals are in June when people are outdoors until 8 or 8:30. I feel like I always have more to do in October, and feel way more tired at 9 pm in October than 9 pm in June.
Now it’s probably true than more people currently work at sedentary jobs, and/or flexible ones, where missing a bit of beauty sleep doesn’t have that much impact. Kids may be another matter. However, the time zones and need to score some west coast ratings are as big a factor as the length of the games. No quick fix likely.
100% true, and RR's post was also spot-on, but hopefully the irony of the descent of BTF itself into a place where people expect to be catered to isn't being missed here.
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