Major League Baseball ratings continue to decline, on the heels of a 2008 season that saw record lows for both regular season coverage and the World Series.
The Wall Street Journal reports that ratings for baseball on FOX are down 9% so far this season, and down “23% from 2000.” While the 23% drop from 2000 levels is understandable, considering the general decline in ratings for all sports over the past nine years, the 9% drop from last year’s record low levels cannot be encouraging.
In the two weeks leading up to last Saturday’s game, MLB on FOX drew ratings of 1.7 (May 9) and 1.6 (May 16), down 23% and 11% respectively from the comparable games last year. The 1.6 on May 16 was tied with an NHL playoff game on NBC as the lowest rating of the weekend for a live sporting event on broadcast. The only programs to draw lower ratings that weekend were taped horse racing, taped poker, taped extreme sports and a half-hour NBA pregame show.
While FOX “is less concerned with the shrinking Saturday audience,” since the regular season package is worth only 10% of the net’s “$255 million annual rights fee,” it should be pointed out that the MLB regular season broadcast package has drawn record low ratings for two consecutive years now. And with ratings already down nearly double-digits, this could be the third-straight year of record low numbers.
A FOX spokesman told the Wall Street Journal that “network executives will … strategize with Commissioner Bud Selig about reversing the downward trends,” with the focus on improving ratings for the All-Star Game and World Series. Some of the “[p]lans include showing baseball movies on Sunday afternoons on Fox’s sister channel FX, and promotional ads with broadcasters Joe Buck and Tim McCarver.”
