The ESPN2 telecast of Tuesday night’s Washington Nationals/San Francisco Giants game, in which Barry Bonds became the new all-time home run king, drew a 1.1 cable rating with 995,000 households. Shortly after Bonds hit #756, the rating rose to a 1.9 with 1.8 million viewers.
As a comparison, the game where Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run drew a 22.3/36 on NBC in 1974, while the game in which Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris‘ single-season home run record drew a 12.9/21 on FOX in 1998. The game in which Bonds broke McGwire’s record pulled in a 1.7 on ESPN2 in 2001.
It should be pointed out, in the wake of headlines like “Aaron outrates Bonds on television by 15-to-1 margin“, that any comparison of ratings from 33 years ago to the television ratings of today is inherently flawed. Aaron’s home run aired in prime time on NBC, back when there were far fewer television channels than today, and the proliferation of cable networks was virtually nonexistent. Compare that to Bonds’ home run, which aired on a niche cable network (ESPN2, as opposed to ESPN) with a late night start, in a television landscape with nearly infinite options. In other words, if one is looking to trash Bonds and retroactively venerate Aaron, television ratings are not the way to go about it.
Bonds’ 755th home run drew a 0.9 final national rating to ESPN2 on Saturday, August 4. While the game was the fourth-highest rated sporting event of the day, it was also outdrawn by the NASCAR Busch Series event that also aired on ESPN2.
In other baseball ratings news, Tom Glavine‘s 300th win drew a 2.6 final national rating for ESPN, the highest rated baseball game on broadcast or cable last weekend.
