By Ryan Corazza
I wouldn’t say any of the MLB divisional series were particularly compelling: the Dodgers swept the Cardinals, the Yankees swept the Twins, the Angels swept the Red Sox. The only series that went past three games was between the Phillies and the Rockies, as the Phillies won in four games.
So, back to my logic from yesterday, if this first round of playoffs featured a bunch of sweeps, not as many people were watching right? I mean, if there was a decisive Game 5 in any of these, they could have seen a bit of a ratings bump, correct?
As it turns out, TBS hit the ratings goldmine for the divisional rounds, turning in their best one-week ratings ever, for any programming. The details:
The first round of the Major League Baseball playoffs helped TBS to its best one-week ratings in its 33-year history.
The Turner Broadcasting Systems network said it averaged almost 4.8 million viewers for each of the 13 division series playoff games, up 11 percent from last year.
Pretty impressive stuff. And as Craig points out over at Circling the Bases, there’s a pretty simple reason for this: five of the six playoff teams — sorry Minnesota! — make up four (two L.A.-based teams) of the top five media markets in America. The bigger the market, the bigger the audience. Doesn’t get any more simple than that.
And that’s why a Yankees vs. Dodgers World Series would be perfect for baseball: not only do you have the Joe-Torre-playing-his-old-team storyline, but you get the two largest media markets in America battling it out against each other, which means more viewers for baseball, which servers to improve the sport’s bottom line.
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