The first night of the League Championship Series telecasts would appear to vindicate baseball’s regionalization plans. At least when it comes to attracting viewers.
ABC had a 14.6 national Nielsen rating and a 24 share, the highest for an LCS in seven years. The opener of the 1988 NLCS between the Mets and Dodgers had a 16.4 rating on ABC.
A national Nielsen rating point represents 959,000 TV households. Shares are a percentage of sets in use.
The national ratings average was helped by a 47.9 in Seattle, 45.8 in Cleveland, 31.6 in Cincinnati and 30.2 in Atlanta, the four cities still involved in the playoffs. Also, ABC won the prime-time numbers game, 14.4 to 14.1 for NBC
Without regionalization, only two of those cities would have had such high numbers. In Chicago, for instance, the Indians-Mariners game had an 11.3 rating with a 17 share on WLS-Ch. 7.
Also, Tuesday night’s national rating was 29 percent higher than the 12.6 for the CBS telecast of the 1993 ALCS opener between the White Sox and Blue Jays.
“It’s what we’ve said all along about regionalization, that it would restore ratings,” said a spokesman for NBC, which will pick up its share of The Baseball Network LCS telecasts Friday. “It would appear on the way to doing that.”