Sweep whiffs NBC
Yanks win; Peacock pruned
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Wednesday's series-clinching victory snagged the best World Series Game 4 rating in three years, but the Yanks' sweep of the Atlanta Braves meant the second-lowest Fall Classic average in history.
Only last year's series, also a Yankees sweep, has ever rated lower than this year's 16.0 rating, 26 share average. That's 13% better than the year-ago Yanks-Padres 14.1/24, but short of the event's other lowest-ever marks -- a 16.4/29 for the quake-interrupted 1989 Oakland A's-San Francisco Giants World Series (also a four-game sweep, by Oakland) and a 16.7/29 for the 1997 Florida Marlins-Cleveland Indians matchup that went seven games.
Coming up short
It's the first time a team has swept two straight World Series in 60 years; the Yankees achieved that feat in 1938-39. That's great for Yankee fans, but not so great for NBC, which needed a longer series to maximize its return on expensive baseball rights. In fact, the Peacock might have done better demo numbers Thursday night with a Game 5 than with its formidable Thursday lineup in rerun.
However, Wednesday's win did rally in the Nielsens to a 17.8/29 in homes, best for a Game 4 since 1996's Yankees-Braves matchup (17.9/32). Wednesday's rating, baseball's best this year, falls well short of Super Bowl numbers (40.2/61) but ahead of championship results for college basketball (17.2/27), college football (17.2/26) and pro basketball (11.0/22).
Aging pastime
Baseball skews a little older, though, and Wednesday's Game 6 average in adults 18-49 (9.3/26) trails the Super Bowl (36.4/71), college basketball (11.0/29) and college football (10.7/26), while still topping pro hoops (6.0/25).
The Yankees' clinching victory Wednesday rocketed to a 39.6/54 households average in the New York market and a 34.5/46 in Atlanta.
Each household rating point reps about 1 million homes, 1% of the U.S. total. The share is also a percentage, but measured against only homes in which TV is being watched during the slot involved.
