Sports

Idle musings on America’s most watched shows.

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Okay, let’s see if I have this right.

Ignore for a second that the Sports Business Daily has made an article available free if only briefly. This (courtesy Fang’s Bites) is a list of the highest-rated programs so far this year. The only programs to get more than 24.8 million viewers are the Oscars and episodes of American Idol.

(Does anyone know of any other programs to get into that range that come later in the year that aren’t sports?)

So, let’s take the Super Bowl’s rating of 42.0, divide it by its number of viewers (98,732,000), then multiply by the lowest number of viewers on the list to establish the cutoff, and we get a rating of 10.5.

Wait… the lowest-rated sports event on the list is the Ravens-Titans playoff game. Which got a 15.4 rating. Ravens-Dolphins should have also gotten on the list at 15.0, as should have Cardinals-Panthers, Falcons-Cardinals, the Rose Bowl, the college basketball championship game, and depending on relative positioning, the Super Bowl Pregame Show.

Okay, let’s try the conference championship games. Try the AFC Title Game. That last place episode of Idol should have gotten a 13.4. That still doesn’t account for the three NFL Playoff games I mentioned. The NFC title game? By those standards, the lowest rating should be 14.1. Still doesn’t account for Ravens-Dolphins.

Okay, let’s zip down to Ravens-Titans. Well, this makes more sense: a 15 even, evidently with more viewers than Ravens-Dolphins. Still, evidently rating/viewers is not a constant and there’s a bit more that goes into the formulae… which could be a problem if I want to work with that sort of thing.

(Although at the very bottom it says the ratings are Live + Same Day. Are those not the same numbers as the final ratings? How useful is that?)

More on the greatest player of all time debate.

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So earlier today I heard Michael Wilbon claim on PTI you have to put Federer ahead of Sampras because the tiebreaker is that Federer won the French and Sampras didn’t.

Um, NO. Sampras got the same number of Grand Slams as Federer against better competition, and you can’t begrudge him never winning the French because of that. ESPECIALLY since the only reason Federer won the French is because Nadal crapped out.

Get it? Got it? Good.

Let’s bring this guy down to earth.

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I’m sorry, Mr. Perrotta.

There IS debate as to whether Roger Federer is the greatest player of all time. You don’t get to cop out by saying “well, you can’t compare players of different eras”. You CAN say Federer played against inferior opposition for most of his career and never won the French when he had to get past Nadal.

You CAN say Sampras, or Agassi, or McEnroe, or Conners, or Borg, or even Laver and some guys I’ve never heard of were better because they may not have been as dominating, but they proved it against opposition that was as good as they were.

Top 10? At this point, yes. But I vehemently object to anyone who suggests there’s no debate that Federer is the greatest player of all time.

Let’s look at the big picture.

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First, in order to keep Extra Innings the cable companies swung a deal that gave MLB Network wide distribution, not just on the Sports Entertainment Pack.

Then, Comcast and the NFL spontaneously settled their differences out of the blue, and Comcast agreed to give the NFL Network wide distribution as well. At the same time, Comcast also finally reached an agreement with ESPNU, and that’ll involve wide distribution as well.

Now, in the past week, Comcast has engaged in similar distribution-broadening with the NHL Network, and now NBATV. (Although the NBATV deal was reported on as early as March.)

That doesn’t even mention the end of the impasse between Comcast and Big Ten Network last year; outside the Big Ten footprint it was placed on the Sports Entertainment Pack.

So I have to ask: Is Comcast giving up on its Sports Entertainment Pack?

What’s next? Will CBS College Sports or the FCS networks get bumped up? What about the Tennis Channel? Will new channels like GOL TV get added to make up for the losses? Is ESPN Classic getting bumped down, as was rumored? Could I even have the opportunity to get the mtn. outside that conference’s footprint?
(I’m certainly not complaining about the sudden jolt in options, and the ability to watch all the cool new stuff, especially on NFLN and ESPNU.)

A thought on the Belmont Stakes.

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You may recall that before the Preakness I was wondering if I would be cursing Rachel Alexandra for skipping the Derby and ruining her own shot at a historic Triple Crown.

There’s still that element with the added element of skipping the Belmont, but now I think I might be cursing her for running the Preakness and ruining Mine That Bird’s shot.

Any Triple Crown is historic at this point after the long wait, but this one might turn out to have been ruined at the Preakness instead of the Belmont like so many others this decade.

Now I could be wrong about the first sentence…

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Weren’t ESPN The Magazine stories placed on Insider before they launched a new website with all the bells and whistles?

And does this mean I have to start paying for ESPN The Magazine stories (with an Insider subscription that requires an ESPN The Mag print subscription anyway)? (I’d rather not lose Bill Simmons’ magazine columns!)

Could actually be worth watching… basically one test of the “you can only read our stuff if you pay to receive the dead trees” model for Saving Newspapers ™.

Idea to save the NHL.

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I’ve heard it suggested that the reason the NHL hasn’t caught on in the South is because the kids can’t play it without any ice or snow. I personally think that’s bullshit, since I don’t think I’ve ever touched a football in my life. Maybe the NHL needs to adopt a convoluted and insane championship system! 🙂

But if that does explain the unpopularity of the NHL in the south, tell me what you think of this idea: Put ice rinks in YMCAs, youth centers, standalone buildings, and the like in southern, warm-weather cities. They can be used for anything – figure skating, hockey, even just skating for fun, like on dates and the like. Maybe start some small youth hockey leagues while you’re at it, even if you can field only two teams at first with no subs.

Over time, once the kids have a place to play, maybe it can help make the NHL a reasonably national sport and return it to the Big Four so it doesn’t have so many problems like getting jerked around the schedule so it’s not Conan’s leadin, bumped for Yanni, mired on Versus, and other such stupid, stupid, idiotic things.

(Actually, having the same teams as last year could serve as a good control for whether NBC’s first two games should be 1 and 2 instead of 3 and 4 long-term, a change I’ve liked for at least a year no matter what circumstances brought it about. And I personally think that in the age of the Internet, buzz and word-of-mouth could eventually turn the NHL into a fairly national sport anyway. Seems everyone on the Internet likes the NHL, except for some NBA partisans – each side seems to want to turn any mention of either league on Sports Media Watch into a “my league rulz your league sux” shoutfest.)

There’s a part of me…

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…that’s rooting against Rachael Alexandra.

Not because I’m sexist or anything and I don’t want fillies to win against the colts.

I can’t bear the thought that we possibly maybe could have had a Triple Crown, first Triple Crown in over 30 years, and moreover the once-in-forever possibility of a filly winning the male Triple Crown, only the horse that could have done it ran in the Oaks instead of the Derby. I don’t even care why that decision was made.

We could have had something for the media to legitimately blitz over dammit!

NBA Playoffs First Round Ratings

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Source: Sports Media Watch. This is an experiment. Asterisks indicate rating not reported by SMW; if there is an asterisk and no network, I couldn’t determine whether it was on ESPN or NBATV. I can forgive the lack of NBATV ratings and even the one missing ESPN2 rating. But asterisked ESPN games could get over 2.0 and appear on my year-end roundup! (CLE @ DET Game 3 is most likely to do so and all the others are rather unlikely, and it might not be SMW’s fault, but still.)
EASTERN CONFERENCE FIRST ROUND
DET @ CLE Game 1, ABC, 2.2
DET @ CLE Game 2, TNT, 2.4
CLE @ DET Game 3, ESPN, *
CLE @ DET Game 4, ABC, 3.5

CHI @ BOS Game 1, ESPN, 2.0
CHI @ BOS Game 2, TNT, 2.5
BOS @ CHI Game 3, TNT, 2.2
BOS @ CHI Game 4, ABC, 3.3
CHI @ BOS Game 5, TNT, 2.5
BOS @ CHI Game 6, TNT, 3.5
CHI @ BOS Game 7, TNT, 4.4

PHI @ ORL Game 1, TNT, <2.0
PHI @ ORL Game 2, NBATV, *
ORL @ PHI Game 3, ESPN2, *
ORL @ PHI Game 4, TNT, <2.0
PHI @ ORL Game 5, *
ORL @ PHI Game 6, *

MIA @ ATL Game 1, TNT, 2.2
MIA @ ATL Game 2, TNT, <2.0
ATL @ MIA Game 3, TNT, <2.0
ATL @ MIA Game 4, TNT, 1.8
MIA @ ATL Game 5, TNT, <2.0
ATL @ MIA Game 6, *
MIA @ ATL Game 7, ABC, 2.6

WESTERN CONFERENCE FIRST ROUND
UT @ LAL Game 1, ABC, 3.2
UT @ LAL Game 2, TNT, 2.3
LAL @ UT Game 3, TNT, 2.6
LAL @ UT Game 4, ESPN, 2.2
UT @ LAL Game 5, TNT, 2.4 (SMW has this game listed as Game 4)

NO @ DEN Game 1, TNT, 2.0
NO @ DEN Game 2, TNT, 2.0
DEN @ NO Game 3, ESPN, *
DEN @ NO Game 4, *
NO @ DEN Game 5, TNT, 1.9

DAL @ SA Game 1, ESPN, 1.7
DAL @ SA Game 2, TNT, 2.0
SA @ DAL Game 3, NBATV, *
SA @ DAL Game 4, TNT, <2.0
DAL @ SA Game 5, TNT, 2.2

HOU @ POR Game 1, ESPN, 2.1
HOU @ POR Game 2, NBATV, *
POR @ HOU Game 3, ESPN, *
POR @ HOU Game 4, TNT, 2.1
HOU @ POR Game 5, *
POR @ HOU Game 6, TNT, 2.5