The Ratings Game

On Wednesday, the Rays and Phillies concluded a tense, fundamentally sound, and ultimately unique World Series, in which the Phillies returned a championship to a long-suffering sports city.  Nobody watched.  To be perfectly honest, I didn’t either.  I tuned in for snippets of the games.  Most of the time, I caught the first couple of innings before getting sidetracked by a DVRed episode of Heroes or Mad Men and then falling asleep.  Here’s the big issue.  I’m a baseball junkie that writes for a baseball website.  If the Nationals play the Pirates on a Sunday evening in early June, I’m probably watching the ESPN telecast.  However, in a series where traditional and crisply-played baseball seemed to be the focus, without a significant rooting interest or storyline, Major League baseball lost my viewership along with most of America’s.  According to the Nielsen ratings system, the 2008 World Series averaged an 8.4 rating and a share of 14.*  Last year, as the Red Sox won their second title since the turn of the century, Fox reported ratings of 10.7.

Can we attribute this decline of 21% strictly to the absence of a team from a big market?  Looking at the recent NBA Finals on ABC, the difference in ratings between series with big market teams and those without is stunning.  This year’s finals between the Lakers and Celtics did a 9.3, whereas in the previous year’s battle between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the San Antonio Spurs, ABC received a record-low rating of 6.2.  Returning to baseball, in 2006, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers matched up and averaged a 10.1, which was then the record low.  Thus, the Rays and Phillies came in 17% lower than the previous rock-bottom numbers.  In the era of Tivo, Hulu, iTunes, DVD, and DVR, live sporting events remain some of the only must-see TV.  So the big questions are: What was it about this series that turned off casual fans and seamheads alike, and can we fix them?

Problem #1:The Fox broadcast

Maybe it’s the announcers, maybe it’s the fact that the radar gun explodes into flames every time a pitcher throws over 95, maybe I just can’t handle all the strategically placed celebrities (Did you know Ben Affleck was a Red Sox fan?), but there’s something about the way that Fox broadcasts a game that just doesn’t work for me.  Baseball is a game of subtlety, nuance, strategy, and big moments of explosive action and emotion.  All too often, Joe Buck’s inflection doesn’t match the intensity of the moment.  Similarly, Tim McCarver spends more time looking to fill dead air with silly anecdotes and poorly explained scouting reports sponsored by Axe deodorant than he does analyzing the current situation.  During moments that should draw a fan in to the emotion and intensity of each pitch, Buck and McCarver throw out a quick plug for House or a Burger King “Hot Zone” and push me away.  Ultimately, it just seems that Fox and its constituents have all grown too comfortable in their gig.  The network uses baseball as a giant commercial instead of allowing the beauty of the game to shine through.

The Solution:Have a Survivor-style competition where all interested networks compete for the rights to the World Series.  Throughout the season, each major network would have an opportunity to call a nationally televised series.  We could choose big rivalries, such as Yankees-Red Sox or Cubs-Cardinals.  The networks would then have to put together a pre-game panel, an in-game announcing crew, and their graphics.  If America switched to Dancing with the Stars in the third inning, when Chip Caray threw it down to the field with Craig Sager and his ridiculous toupee and horrible paisley tie, it would be the equivalent of the network getting voted off the island.  That way, the fans would ultimately choose who would cover the World Series.  My vote would go to USA and its announcing team of Jim Ross and Jerry “The King” Lawler.  Hulk Hogan could be the special guest umpire.

Problem #2:The late start times

Fox forces the games to start at 8:29 PM Eastern-time to encourage west-coast viewership.  The thought is that those people just returning home from work will be able to turn on the TV and tune into a game in the second or third inning, not having missed much.  The reality is that most people on the west coast could care less about sports unless their teams are playing.  LA barely tuned in when the Lakers made the Finals last year.  The majority of the population resides in the Eastern Time zone, where a World Series game typically ends after midnight.  As evidenced by the fact that the final innings of the suspended game 5 earned an 11.1 rating and 18 share, fans are more likely to watch a game in which they know they will see the conclusion.

Would you read the Harry Potter series if you knew that every time you reached page 350 you had to move on to the next book?  How about if you were forced to watch The Godfather, but had to turn it off after the death of Vito Corleone?  Look at how many people were furious with David Chase when the Sopranos went black in its final episode.

The Solution:Simple, start the games at 7 PM EST.  This way, people on the eastern seaboard will watch the game knowing that, as long as there are no extenuating circumstances, it will most likely only keep them up to 11 or 11:30.  Similarly, those on the west coast can come home from work, tune into the middle innings and comfortably stay for the conclusion of the game.  Major League Baseball should take note, Lost had its most successful season after ABC announced that the entire story would come to fruition and a conclusion in 2010.  People like closure.

Problem #3:TBS played the Steve Harvey Show instead of the first forty-five minutes of Game 7 between the Rays and Red Sox.

Solution:Don’t broadcast the Steve Harvey Show.  Ever.

Problem #4:The weather

Major League Baseball as a corporation is already attributing the low ratings to the rain-delayed start of Game 3, which did a record low 6.1 ratings, and the rain-suspended Game 5, which did a 9.6 as a whole.  However, the difficulties with the weather that will forever define this series are mere symptoms.  The real issue lies in the network and money-driven extension of the playoffs.  In order to schedule big games on days and at times that will produce the most viewers and increase the value of commercial air-time, the league has built an increasing number of off-days into the postseason schedule.  When the Wild Card was introduced in 1995, the ALDS between the Yankees and Mariners went all five games, the ALCS between the Mariners and Indians as well as the politically incorrect World Series between the Braves and Indians went six of a possible seven games.  Yet, the season still ended on October 28 ^th .  This year, only the ALCS between the Red Sox and Rays went the full seven games, and yet the season ended later, on October 29 ^th .  Had the Rays extended the World Series to its full complement of games, the season would have concluded in November.  Next season, a potential World Series Game 7 would occur on November 5 ^th .  In most areas, the weather in early November is not baseball weather.

Furthermore, the addition of these unnecessary off-days robs baseball of what makes its regular season so unique.  During the 162 games, teams play, for the most part, every day.  Baseball rewards consistency and depth over streaks and stars.  If every member of a team’s 25 man roster does not effectively contribute at some point, forget the World Series, that team will not make it to the playoffs.  However, once a team reaches the postseason, baseball provides days to rest and recover that never existed in the past.  As a result, managers can avoid using a struggling pitcher or a slumping hitter.  Where an ace would return in a deciding Game 7 on three days rest, he now may start on his typical fifth day.  We seamheads see a different game in October than we do between the months of April and September.

In that regard, postseason baseball is a lot like Die Hard with a Vengeance.  The first Die Hard was amazing.  Beyond the great action, Alan Rickman’s smooth yet disconcerting performance as Hans, and the shocking appearance of Reginald VelJohnson (Carl Winslow from Family Matters) as John McClane’s (Bruce Willis) only contact to the outside world, what set the movie apart from other shoot-em-up cop flicks was the fact that it was entirely set in one building.  The claustrophobia of big action occurring in such a comparably tiny space provided the movie with an atmosphere that has been imitated for years now.  However, by the time the third Die Hard came out (1995’s Die Hard with a Vengeance), the producers had shifted the focus of the movie.  Instead of relying on the anxiety created by confining the characters, action, and audience to a single space, Die Hard 3 spanned the entirety of New York City.  With the additions of Jeremy Irons and Samuel L. Jackson, it was an incredibly enjoyable action movie.  It just wasn’t a Die Hard movie anymore.  This year’s World Series was the equivalent of Live Free or Die Harder, where most people saw the trailer and decided to wait until the movie appeared on HBO to watch it.

The Solution:Peter Gammons recently mentioned the idea of playing the World Series at a neutral site.  I’m not sure where I stand on this issue.  On the one hand, much of baseball’s mystique has been tied to its stadiums and the varying environments each provide.  No matter the rabidity of a team’s fans, a neutral site could never reproduce the fervor of a raucous Chicago crowd.  Nevertheless, there is something to be said for creating a site that could be considered the Mecca of Major League Baseball.  The NCAA makes Omaha work so well that the mere mention of the city brings to mind images of the College World Series.  By removing travel days, the World Series would play out over seven straight days.  People would travel from all over the country to watch a baseball game or two.  It would be an incredible atmosphere reminiscent of the festivals of Ancient Rome.  It might be just what the game needs.  If Major League Baseball could convince Kevin Costner to single-handedly build the field and could introduce this site at a press conference where James Earl Jones gave his “People will come…” speech from Field of Dreams, I’d be the first in line at the box office.

* The national rating is the percentage of Americans with televisions watching the program, and the market share is the percentage of Americans with televisions on at the time that tuned into the broadcast.