A lot of interesting information about the TV ratings coming from the
Houston Chronicle about the NBA finals opener:
Quote:
As we projected last week, the Mavericks-Heat NBA Finals have started like a typical NBA Finals involving a Texas team — down in the dumps in the Nielsen ratings.
Even though the outcome was in doubt most of the way, Game 1 had a 7.8 national Nielsen rating with an average audience of 8.56 million households. That's up from 7.2 and 7.86 million for the Spurs-Pistons opener last year but down from 9.8 and 10.6 million for Game 1 of Pistons-Lakers two years ago.
Houston held up its end with an 11.5 rating on KTRK (Channel 13), but that was down from 12.4 for last year's opener. Dallas-Fort Worth rated 32.8, the highest ever for a Mavericks game but no great shakes when compared with the 36.0 rating in Houston for Game 1 of the World Series, which eventually averaged 41.2.
Miami, meanwhile, had a surprisingly ho-hum 24.9 Game 1 rating.
I'm a little surprised by this. I really thought that Dallas and Miami, two major markets and two pretty exciting teams, both with clear starpower, would do well in the ratings. You've got Shaq, Dirk, Wade, lots of points, and two cities that love their sports franchises. Apparently, unless LeBron James is playing, people don't give a shit about basketball much anymore.
However, I was right about this series beating last year's abysmally bad ratings. MSNBC had this blurb the other day:
Quote:
NEW YORK - Ratings for the first two games of the the NBA finals between Miami and Dallas were up 13 percent for ABC in comparison to last year's championship series with San Antonio and Detroit.
The second game of the series on Sunday night, which Dallas won 99-85, drew an average rating of 8.0 _ a 17 percent increase from 2005.
The rating is the percentage of all homes with TVs, whether or not they are in use. Each rating point represents about 1.08 million households.
