TV Sports Ratings

There has been much written already about the CBS ratings for the Elite XC fight on Saturday 5/31 - most of it has been incomplete (at best) and misleading (at worst).

Reports on Monday morning referenced metered market ratings - data from the 56 largest cities - which only took into account the 9-11p portion of the telecast.  Meaning that these ratings, from only part of the country, did not include nearly a full third of the telecast.  That didn’t stop anyone from running with the story, though.  Here is the accurate data:

CBS Elite XC

Saturday, May 31^st, 2008

9-11:51p

The first Elite XC event on CBS easily exceeded anemic time period demo benchmarks, but fell short of the average audience levels the older-skewing network is accustomed to.

Among M18-34, the CBS event had a lower rating than Spike’s UFC 70, UFC 75 and Ken/Tito.  The median age for CBS (41 years) was over a decade older than what Spike sees for UFC live fights.

·         CBS ELITE XC had a 3.0 in M18-49, a 2.2 in P18-49, a 3.2 in M18-34, and an average audience of 4.9 million viewers.  

·         Vs. Prior 4 Week time period (48 Hours Mystery/Crimetime Saturday):  up +233% in M18-49, +540% in M18-34 and down -14% in average audience.

·         Vs. Year ago time period (Ocean’s Twelve):  up +100% in M18-49, +220% in M18-34 and down -15% in average audience.

·         Quarter Hour Ratings among M18-34 built for the first ½ hour, then dropped slightly at 9:30p.  This pattern (1/2 hour of build followed by a ¼ hour decline) continued throughout the nearly 3 hour telecast.

·         The telecast peaked with a 4.7 rating among M18-34 from 11:30-11:45p (with an audience of 7.3 million viewers).

·         Rank Among CBS Primetime Telecasts:  of 497 Primetime telecasts this year on CBS, Elite XC ranks 468^th in average audience, 109^th in M18-49 and 29^th in M18-34.

·         Rank Among CBS Sports Telecasts:  of 254 sports telecasts on CBS between June 2007 and May 2008, Elite XC ranks 73^rd in average audience, 64^th in M18-49 and 58^th in M18-34.

After bidding over $1 billion for the rights to MLB’s All-Star Game, Playoffs and World Series from 1990-1993, CBS announced that the Saturday Game of the Week - a tradition on NBC for over 30 years - would assume a lesser presence.  CBS sporadically scheduled 16 Saturday afternoon telecasts (often going weeks without a game) - a sharp contrast from the roughly 30 per season seen on NBC.

In hindsight, the reduction was both a symptom and accelerator of MLB’s migration from an enterprise driven by national revenue to one dependent on local media.  The rise of cable drove local rights skyward and the fewer games given to CBS and ESPN (whose Sunday Night exclusive window also began in 1990), the more to be sold to regional sports networks who were desperate for content and fueled by the duel revenue streams of advertising and subscriber fees.

With a larger consumer base for both streams, teams in big markets cleaned up and the revenue disparity between the haves and have-nots reached new heights (see Yankees/MSG deal). 

By the time the much-maligned CBS/MLB contract came to an end in 1993, the Saturday Game of the Week was drawing about 40% fewer viewers than NBC garnered just 5 years earlier - heavy erosion even by the standards of the cable era. 

Only after two seasons of the ill-fated Baseball Network (and a players’ strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series) did the Game of the Week return on Fox, with 18 Saturday windows starting in June and extending through the remainder of the season.

Although the return was generally welcome, 1996 ratings for FOX were about 1/3 lower than the CBS levels from 1993 - numbers which were considered anemic by MLB standards at the time. 

Only the steroid-inflated home run craze of 1998 moved the ratings needle in any significant way, but those gains were short-lived.  By 2007, the Game of the Week had drawn its smallest audience since 1996 with younger demos hitting all-time lows. 

There is no shame in erosion in this era of multi-platform saturation and audience fragmentation and even at these levels it pays for FOX to keep it on the air.  With the bulk of their investment devoted to the post-season, keeping a weekly presence on-air is a must.  In addition, MLB is the dominant content provider for the many FOX-controlled regional sports networks and what is good for the sport is good for FOX on both a national and local level. 

Whether the Game of the Week has lost its meaning in an ESPN/MLB.tv/Extra Innings world is an easily answered question at this point.  But, you have to wonder what might have been if MLB had seen fit to preserve its hallmark program - or at least make a concerted effort do so - rather than make a run for the short money.  Instead, the property was irreparably damaged by CBS and the Baseball Network.

FOX’s attempt to pick up the pieces has been admirable in some respects, but the situation brings to mind what David Letterman was told after NBC offered him the Tonight Show:  they are offering you the Jay Leno show, not the Johnny Carson Tonight Show - that’s gone.