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

Ah, danger with unassigned pronouns. My bad.

 

You mean the system that gives every franchise the same opportunity to succeed?Yeah, so damn unfair.

 

This is my point: THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A SUCCESSFUL INSTANCE OF A TV NETWORK INFLATING INTEREST IN A TEAM OR SPORT BY GIVING THEM OUTSIZE COVERAGE OR PRIME-TIME AVAILABILIES RELATIVE TO THEIR CURRENT FOLLOWING. THE SUCCESS RATE IS ZERO PERCENT. You cannot make people care about a Royals-A's or Pirates-Padres game even if you had it follow Glee, American Idol and the Super Bowl. And it is not the TV network's responsibility to act against its own best interests to pursue this dodgy theory, or to do so based on some vague and misplaced idea of fairness. If you didn't want to discuss this on its own, you never should have responded to me, because that's the only horse I've been riding in this thread. If you want to suck me into your salary cap discussion, I pass.

 

Royals-A's and Pirates-Padres are false equivalencies. Of course few will watch these games nationally. Duh!

But how about mixing in a few Phillies-Braves or Rangers-Angels or Twins-Tigers or some other competitive series on Sunday night. I think that is the argument. Yankees-Red Sox six times in six months gets stale.

 

They don't have to have a Royals/A's or a Pirates/Padres game. They could do a Yankees/A's and a Red Sox/Royals game, or a Phillies/Pirates or a Giants/Padres game once in a while. Put them on during the week. They don't have to do all four matchups every year, but they don't need to have 1/3 of their lineup taken up by two teams.

EDIT: Meat beat me to my point.

 

No offense, but that may be the best line on the whole damn board!

 

If there was interest, ESPN would show it. Not because they were aiming for something loftier, but because they want the increased ratings that go with it. The argument originally brought went along the lines of equal coverage = equal interest, or at least much closer levels of interest. That never works. Yankees-Red Sox and Cubs-Cardinals get more national slots because they draw more viewers. In the early part of the season, when the storylines aren't firmed up yet, you go with the dog that runs most consistently.

I'd be curious to see just how many times each team has had games broadcast nationally. I couldn't find data in a cursory Google search.

 

Unfortunately, he meant "Football Bat beat me to my point." Which beats the hell out of "Football Bat beat Meat to my point".

 

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118044786

 

I would be willing to bet that the drop is mostly based on the fact that San Francisco has 1.3 million more TV households than St. Louis does. Assuming the game draws about a 35 rating in the local market of the competing teams -- I think that's a pretty good rough guess across the years -- that alone affects the number by almost half a rating point and well over a million viewers.

 

And you STILL aren't getting it. You can't just change what games are shown. You have to do more to build national interest. You do that by making sure the fans of every team believe their favorite has the same shot as everybody else. You can question the reality of just how big of an advantage the big markets have all you want, but the perception is that the small markets have very little chance to win.

This is where the NFL comes in as an example. You say Pirates-Padres can't get ratings, but Steelers-Chargers sure can. Small markets get good national ratings in the NFL. Why? Because the owners the importance of making sure the fans of every team would stay interested. They had legitimate revenue sharing in place decades ago and they had a cap and floor in place the moment free agency became a reality.

And here's the funny part. The baseball apologists will answer this by telling us how different the NFL is from MLB. Yet somehow, comparing MLB to Arena football and the WNBA makes sense.

 

If Minka Kelly is your point, then it's all good.