Baseball LCS ratings down! The world is coming to an end!

http://espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs/2011/story/_/id/7116112/2011-mlb-playoffs-tv-ratings-league-championship-series

Let's see. St. Louis has a national following. Detroit, top 20 metro area. Dallas Fort Worth has nearly 5 million people now, and they're blaming this crap on small markets?

Let's just call these stories what they are - Booooolhoooosnortsniff...Yankees didn't make it this year! Ratings suck!

 

I've tuned out every last story I've read about TV ratings for a decade now. It's so damn lazy.

The television landscape is so varied and fractured as to make TV ratings comparisons to eras meaningless. Yet, I very rarely see that context given in any story about ratings that I read.

It's just a tad different from 30 years ago when there were four channels to today when my DirecTV list goes up into the 600s. Of course ratings are down.

 

Not the Super Bowl.

 

Good for the fucking Super Bowl. That's one exception out of thousands.

 

But how many people who have the Super Bowl on TV actually watch it and how many use it as an excuse to have a huge party? I know I'm usually among those in the second category where ever I happen to be when it's on.

 

Yeah, I was arguing on a baseball/football throwdown that football benefits from a perfect storm of factors for its popularity, with actual love of the sport being just one of many.

 

The only time ratings matter is when they are part of a larger issue involving the sport's business health. Obviously that is not even close to being the case with baseball.

I do find it funny that ESPN makes sure to note the ratings. A pissy little bunch when a league chooses another bid, aren't they?

 

Just goes to show people would rather watch Monday Night Football with one winless team playing than baseball playoffs. It says more about the state of baseball nationally than football, though. People don't have the attention spans to watch baseball, so they either go to the park or do something else. Selig and his associates are idiots for playing playoff games at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. Of course ratings will suffer.

 

Besides, it's kinda hard to call DFW a small market, seeing as how the DFW metropolitan statistical area is the fourth-largest in the U.S. (behind NY, LA and Chicago).

 

Geez, maybe if the networks stopped force-feeding everyone the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies and Cubs at every opportunity, there might be more interest in other teams if/when they meet in the postseason? Imagine if the sum of our knowledge of pro football was limited to the Jets, Giants, Cowboys and Steelers?

 

Blue font needed there? Selig and his associates have also been slammed for playing so many games in primetime, with 7:30 starts. When else are they supposed to play them?

 

There are plenty of posters on here who think it is just fine that MLB leans so heavily on a few of its franchises to carry the financial load. But this illustrates just one reason why the NFL is better off. The ratings are going to be there no matter who wins in the NFL.