Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals was indeed a classic; Cavaliers star LeBron James scored 48 points, including 29 of Cleveland’s final 30 — and 25 in a row — to lead his team to a 109-107 double-overtime victory.
The game drew a 4.0/7 national rating and won the night on cable, as 5.7 million viewers tuned in on TNT against tough competition (the game beat the USA Network vehicle The Starter Wife, which the cable net spent $20 million dollars advertising). The 5.7 million viewers is the most of the postseason on broadcast or cable (Game 6 on Saturday night, the lowest rated night of the week, pulled in a 4.2 5.3 overnight rating).
However, 5.7 million viewers paled in comparison to the numbers for another event airing in the same timeslot. The Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee drew 7.01 million viewers on ABC, a broadcast network with larger reach than TNT.
Before anyone begins going into convulsions of shock, anger, or laughter, it should be pointed out that this is far from an embarrassment for the NBA. This is far from having an NHL game beat a regular season game back in March, or having Yankees/Red Sox beat two playoff games back in April.
The fact is, it is unfair to compare the numbers of the Spelling Bee and the NBA. The Bee aired on broadcast and the game aired on cable; 99 out of 100 times, an event airing in prime-time on broadcast television would have to draw very low numbers to have a lower rating than an event airing on cable.
More importantly, the Spelling Bee is not truly a sport, though ESPN covers it. The event attracts a different audience than a traditional sporting event does. In fact, in terms of the audience watching, the Spelling Bee is closer to the regular entertainment programming on broadcast (i.e, reality shows, et al) that routinely draw better numbers than sporting events. (In other words, the bulk of the audience watching the Bee is just as likely to tune into “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?” or “So You Think You Can Dance“). While sports draw their biggest numbers primarily from young male demos, mainstream entertainment fare like the Bee have the aid of a more diverse audience made up of multiple demographics.
As an example, the Cavaliers/Pistons game did draw a better rating in the sports-friendly adults 18-49 demographic than the Bee (2.4 to 2.0), despite drawing fewer viewers — an indication that the Bee had the aid of viewership across several more demographics.
Unfortunately, most people are unlikely to look at the numbers in context, and will instead mock the league for having fallen to teenagers spelling words that most people have never heard of.
