Despite being in the midst of a pennant race, MLB on Fox drew its weakest overnight of the season on Saturday. Most of the country received the Giants-Yankees matchup, and Fox picked up just a 1.2 overnight for that window. The week before, Fox drew just a 1.3 final rating for the Yankees-Red Sox matchup.

You can't even blame a strong slate of college football this past weekend like you could the week before, because the schedule of NCAA games on Saturday was very weak. MLB couldn't even draw big numbers with their most popular team hosting the defending World Champions. If both teams were more of a factor in the Postseason picture, maybe ratings would have been better.

This weekend, ratings could go in the toilet thanks to a trio of small market matchups being on tap: Indians/Twins, Pirates/Reds, and Rays/Blue Jays. All three games have Postseason implications, but there's really not much widespread appeal across the country for any of those teams. Fox does get a break with the marquee college football games starting at 3:30 and later, but there's still potential for the final regular season weekend of baseball on Fox to turn ugly.

On the bright side for nationally televised baseball, ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball is done for the year, and finished up 8% in ratings and 6% in viewers from 2012, averaging a 1.3 rating and 1.896 million viewers. Of course, those numbers from a year ago were the lowest for Sunday Night Baseball since 2005, so let's not exactly throw a party quite yet.

[Sports Media Watch]

About Joe Lucia

I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.

Comments are closed.