If by 10%, you mean 26% ... and by "silly," you mean "more people watched the game than ABC, NBC and The WB combined" then I agree with you completely.

das

I guess the real lesson is that a Red Sox/Yankees Game 7 trumps The King of Queens.

But the King of Queens does trump Game 4 of the World Series, apparently.

I admit I didn't look up the actual figure. Still, 26% is nowhere near the type of majority that Deftones was assuming. Also, I think you would know better than anyone that there are lots of other channels besides the major broadcast networks. Your comparison would have worked much better if it was 1975.

And yes, baseball is silly. A ballgame played by grown men that's slow and tedious. Sounds like heaps of fun.

Edit: According to Mediaweek, FOX had 28.66 million viewers last night. All other broadcast networks had 39.6. It seems likely that there are a lot of people (more than watched the game) that are interested in watching something other than baseball.

So what? Is FOX not supposed to show baseball in primetime because they only had 41% of the OTA audience? They are in the business to make money.

I still don't understand why you are upset about this. As you have said, there were other options (including cable/sat) for non-baseball fans. You are not 'losing' any episodes of primetime series.

Deftones' attitute that the people not interested in watching the baseball don't matter is what upset me. He seems to think that anyone that would want to watch something other than this baseball game (is it the World Series, or what? I don't even know why it's important) is pretty much nuts. Also, this idea that there's a SPORTING EVENT on and all the other networks should pull out their reruns of Capitol Critters instead.

I'm glad that only CBS decided to preempt their programming, and there were great viewing choices for those of us that had no desire to watch baseball.

Oh, I just picked those because someone mentioned them specifically earlier in the thread.

Still, with all the choices on the air, to grab 26% of the audience on one channel? That's pretty impressive. Like you say, it's not 1975 anymore.

das

26% of a the total population for one station, is about as huge as you can get w/o being the Superbowl. Also, as Red Dog pointed out, it was 41% of the all people watching TV at all were watching that game. I don't know how other way to point out that regardless of how many stations you combine to get numbers, 41% of all people watching TV were watching the game, certainly trumps anything else that was on.

I am sorry you feel that baseball is tedious, and ridiculous, but in the end, there's about 1/2 of the viewing public that were watching TV last night who would strongly, strongly disagree.

41% of people watching OTA. Not all TV.

And there's about half (well actually it appears to be 3/4, but who's counting?) of the viewing public that doesn't really care about baseball all that much. Yet you continue to act as though every single American adult was watching last night.

And you continue to contend that individual shows that didn't get preempted, were more popular than baseball because there was a percentage of people that didn't watch it. Let's face it, baseball waxed the floor in prime time last night compared to what was on.

Just because you are complaining, I hope the WS goes to a full seven games, just to preempt all your favorite shows.

Actually, I never said any such thing. I'm simply pointing out that while baseball did capture a large share of the audience last night, there are many more people (apparently, 74%) that didn't watch, so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for networks to preempt their regular programming (even though you seem to think that most people were watching the game last night). If last night is any measure, I think CBS made the wrong decision.

And what does widescreen have to do with this discussion?

Depends on what the demographics are for CSI: NY which is basically what this is about. If they have a large male audience, it was probably a good idea. This is the point in time where ad rates get adjusted for new shows (depending on their success). There is no doubt that CSI: NY would have had a significantly lower rating last night. By steering clear, the average rating for it does not drop, and CBS can justify a higher ad rate (which is surely what they are going to do, given that it is has been a success in the slot). Also, CSI: NY is the type of show a borderline baseball fan can forego watching knowing that 1) it is not a serial program and 2) it will be repeated ad nauseum. By comparison, ABC figures that Lost, given its different format, doesn't have this problem (of course, they also decided to do an additional airing).

Actually, that 74% is not a good figure to use. That's percentage of households that have television, not how many people were watching. That's why that 41% is such an important number. 41% of people that were watching TV at that time, were watching the baseball game.

But as Red Dog pointed out, that 41% figure was OTA only. It simply does not mean what you think it means.

And where is he getting this OTA stuff? I don't ever remember seeing that being calculated in the sampling for the ratings/share breakdown.

Just for a refresher, here are the definitions of ratings/share:

Rating

The estimate of the size of a television audience relative to the total population, expressed as a percentage. The estimated percent of all TV households or persons tuned to a specific station.

Share

The percent of the Households Using Television (HUT) or Persons Using Television (PUT), which are tuned to a specific program or station at a scheduled time.

Based on your Mediaweek numbers, it's really more like 42%. Not that it matters much.

das

Those Mediaweek numbers just list broadcast stations. There are no cable channels to be found. But if you want to contend that 41% (or 42%) of the entire viewing public was watching baseball last night, and no one was watching cable, then that's fine by me. You'd be wrong, of course. But whatever.

Well, as I already noted, 26% of the viewers were watching. I thought we established that. 26% of all viewers, 42% of broadcast viewers. It's not rocket science. If your Mediaweek numbers are correct, some quick math yields about 42 million people watching other shit. That's a lot more than I'd expect.

das

Except that it apparently won't. CBS isn't planning on pulling programming next Wednesday, when there will definitely be a game (Game 4) of the World Series played.

And they apparently aren't pulling programming tonight even though there's a Game 7 being played and baseball will likely still win the night by a large margin.

I understand how a lot of people enjoy baseball. I'm an Astros fan, I am really enjoying this season so far. But I also think that giving up the night because baseball is on is a bad thing because there are people who will opt for non-baseball programming. Might as well attempt to cater to them rather than pretending they don't exist.

Sure, you'll still lose the night in the ratings and probably not do as well as you otherwise would have, but I just dislike the whole idea of giving up the night because of what the other network is playing.

I'm not quibbling with you... Deftones seems to think that that ~40% figure applies to all viewers, and it doesn't.

But really, it doesn't matter. As long as you can get your baseball and my shows aren't preempted, who gives a shit? I don't watch anything on FOX, anyway.

Nor I you. I was just responding with the data.

das

... which during the beginning of the Fall season could be the difference between a show surviving and not. It's staggering how many good shows get canned because of a network's inability to program around the competition. It wouldn't make too much sense to program around all the baseball games, but when going up against a 41 broadcast share and what was one of the most anticipated baseball games in television history, it's prudent to just let them have it ... or repeat your programming so viewers aren't confused. While it may suck to not have new programming to watch every now and then, it would suck more for your favorite show to get cancelled because the network aired a pivotal episode or series premiere against some major television event, and viewers didn't come back. Legend of the Rangers is almost certainly not on the air because its East Coast premiere was head-to-head with one of the highest rated playoff football games in history, and it got crushed. That it nearly tripled those numbers on the West Coast when the game was over didn't matter to the ad folk. Numbers are king in this absurd game, and saving your programming for a night when it has a fighting chance is often a smart move.

das

So are the regular new episodes of CSI, Without A Trace and ER going to be on tonight as scheduled?

I would assume so. The insanity of last night was because of the Sox/Yankees, not baseball in general.

das