All-Star Game gets its lowest-ever TV ratings

[madinmaryland]

NEW YORK (AP) -- Major League Baseball's All-Star game has earned its lowest-ever television rating.

The National League's 3-1 victory Tuesday night on Fox earned a 7.5 fast national rating and 13 share. That's down 16 percent from the 8.9/15 for last season's game, a 4-3 win by the AL.

The previous low was an 8.1/14 in 2005.

Ratings represent the percentage of all households with televisions, and shares represent the percentage of all homes with TVs in use at the time.

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/baseball/mlb/07/14/all.star.ratings.ap/index.html

What to go $elig. You have even ruined a game that was meant to showcase the premier players of the game.

[wilt the stilt]

1. Selig

A midget among average people

[bluedigger]

2. I wonder why?

Seriously, what was different this year?:shrug:

It's not like folks were flush with cash and doing other things. As a Red Sox fan I waited to watch until after Maddow, there being no starters.

Is that it? Red Sox Nation tuned out - could be good for 16%...:rofl:

Anybody else got a good theory?

(Not meant to imply my theory is "good".)

[El Supremo]

3. Everyone was watching the news about the timed death of George Steinbrenner. n/m

[LisaM]

7. Oh dear oh dear

that shouldn't have made me laugh so hard!

[madinmaryland]

14. So are Bill Gates and Steve Jobs going to die before the end of the year??

:shrug:

[El Supremo]

21. No, they're young enough to lobby,,,

with tons of money to have the estate tax permanently repealed.

[madinmaryland]

4. I watched Olbermann on DVR, and then Maddow.

We watched the Biography Channel do a bio on the Cheers TV show.

Yeah. I caught the last half inning of the game!

:rofl:

[Upton]

5. Lincecum pitched last year

and fan or not, everybody wanted to see him..

Ubaldo...not so much

[bluedigger]

16. Manuel didn't even want to see Timmy pitch this year.

[Telly Savalas]

26. I'm not a Red Sox fan, but the omission of Kevin Youkilis from the AL team

was so monumentally stupid that I found it hard to give a shit at all about the game. By any reasonable standard, the guy is one of the top 5 position players in the AL.

[inthebrain]

6. The All Star game has gotten too corporate

Baseball has in general.

Watching the All Star game now adays is like watching all the suits on Wall Street get drunk after work. A few baseball writers wrote about this a few years ago (can't recall which ones) and pretty much predicted that shunning the average fan was going to kill the game.

It's already begun.

[bluedigger]

17. I would buy that except for one thing.

I can't get my head around how the second easiest/cheapest team sport, after soccer, for kids to play, has managed to market itself to the elites. :crazy:



:think:



:think:



:think:



































SELIG

:nuke:

[LisaM]

8. Where were the stars, or even the favorites?

Verlander wasn't even supposed to be there (added in), PayRod didn't even play, and the lengths that Facebook groups (and presumably Twitter) went to to jack the vote were ridiculous.

They need to go back to letting the experts decide who plays.

[madinmaryland]

9. Yeah. Even upton and cboy4 were not able to vote enough times (49,000 times each)

to get a single Ginat on the starting line-up.

:rofl:

Upton got out-cheated!!1!!

[bluedigger]

13. Don't get me started...

I mean, how does Youkilis, who seems destined to be a consistent top 10 vote getter for MVP, have to win a last man fan vote?:banghead:

[El Supremo]

10. They didn't know if the game was in Los Angeles or Anahiem...

or just California.

[madinmaryland]

11. I thought the game was in Denver.

:wtf:

[Condem]

12. Just 49 days to the greatest sport in the world.

But, again. Who's counting??

[madinmaryland]

15. 9 days until training camp opens!!

:woohoo:

[SnakeEyes]

18. Wrong, the English Premier League starts sooner

:bounce:

[Upton]

19. August 14th..

and I'm psyched. This is going to be Arsenal's year!

[SnakeEyes]

24. I sure hope so.

I was really disappointed we didn't have as good a second half of the season this past year.

[HuckleB]

25. EPL. Blech.

I'll take the mainlanders any day.

[flvegan]

23. +1000

[Kingofalldems]

20. If Stras was there--the ratings would have been sky high

[fishwax]

22. I think all-star games in general are pretty much irrelevant now

It's a function of the media environment, imo. Ratings have declined steadily (and drastically) in the 20 years since the beginning of ESPN Sunday Night Baseball in 1990. Prior to that, you could go an entire season and only see star players on TV a few times, especially if you didn't live in an MLB market. Every Braves game was on TBS and every Cubs game on WGN, but other than that it was tough to get more than a game or two a week on TV. So the All-Star game was a rare chance to see out of market stars (or stars from the other league) that otherwise you could only follow in the newspaper. With all the games on TV now, with inter-league play, with easy access to all the highlights you want on TV or the internet, it just isn't as big a deal. The ratings for the NBA all-star game are way down from the 90s too ...

[Renew Deal]

27. I think people are Sportsed out

After the World Cup, Lebron, and Steinbrenners death, I think people have had it.

But the game shouldn't count for anything. It takes the fun out of it.

[Yavin4]

28. The True Reason: Inter-League Play

That's the big tradeoff. The All Star game was about seeing the best in both leagues go against each other, with Inter-League play, fans can see NL stars play AL stars in games that really matter and count.

[Auggie]

30. I like this thought

[Capt. America]

29. Am I the only person that loves the All-Star game? I watch it with my boys every year.

[LisaM]

31. I like it, but it used to be better

I was quite startled to learn this year that many of the players used to leave before it was over. I only found this out because of the new substitution rules this year.

And Fox Sports can pretty much ruin any big game, with all the celebrity spotting.