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Caught looking Viewers tune in to sitcoms, tune out of Game 3
NEW YORK (AP) -- "Frazier" helped NBC deliver a knockout to Fox's coverage of Game 3 of the Subway Series. The Mets' 4-2 victory over the Yankees on Tuesday night drew a 12.4 national rating and 21 share. That's 26 percent lower than Game 3 of the 1999 World Series and 19 percent below Game 3 in 1998, and left this series on pace to be the lowest-rated Fall Classic ever. The season premiere of "Frazier" drew an 18.9/28 from 9-10 p.m. EDT. The baseball game had a 12.4 during that hour. For the night, NBC averaged a 12.9 rating in prime time, compared to Fox's 11.9. Baseball's postseason has had to compete with the opening of the fall TV season, which was delayed because of the later-than-usual Summer Olympics. The cumulative rating for the World Series is a 12.1 -- 21 percent below last year through three games and 10 percent off 1998's pace. The 1998 (14.1 on Fox) and 1999 (16.0 on NBC) World Series produced the event's worst ratings as the Yankees won both in four-game sweeps. Fox has been counting on the evenly matched Yankees and Mets - the first three games were settled by a total of four runs -- to play six or seven games to boost ratings. TV audiences tend to increase in all the major sports as a series goes deeper. "Last night was a very strong night for NBC and the premier of their Tuesday night lineup," Fox Sports Networks vice president Lou D'Ermilio said Wednesday. "If we go into Game 5 at 2-2, there's going to be heightened interest for that game." Each rating point represents a little more than 1 million TV households. Share is the percentage of in-use TVs tuned to a given program.
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