Game 1 of Cavs-Spurs draws lowest prime time rating ever http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs2007/news/story?id=2898196 GO SPURS GO! And just imagine if the Pistons were playing instead, Lebron has to have been 50% of the reason for people watching. Cmon Stern lets see some more Draft Lotto magic.
ugh the league was in between a rock and a hard place if they let amare and diaw play then they would have been harsher criticism for playing favorites and that there was an "agenda" by the league.
people who really love basketball. problem with you there in America is that you like watch only dunking, but not good team defence
It's more the fault of the Mavs choking and ruining the WCF than w/e Stern did to Phoenix. That and the East sux.
what people don't seem to realize, is that ratings are down everywhere , for all sports. fact is, fifteen or twenty years ago most people only had the basic network channels--so you had like 12 possible viewing options. now, most people have cable or a dish, in which case they have hundreds of channels. of COURSE ratings are down. the only ratings that have stayed up are nfl ratings, and its no coincidence that they play almost all of their regular season games on network tv. im not a big baseball fan, but do baseball people constantly talk about ratings being down as well? with the last two years having been cardinals-tigers and white sox-astros, ratings must have plummeted for the world series, yet all we hear about is the decline of the nba.
I consider myself a big NBA fan. I buy league pass and I watch a good amount of basketball each year. However, I could not think of a more boring finals amongst the teams that got into the playoffs this year. Actually, it's more like the Spurs are the most boring, uninteresting team that could have come out of the West aside from the Jazz. I have no desire at all to watch this series aside from maybe seeing a game 6 or game 7.
The Spurs are ratings killers but since they won the West, too bad for the NBA. They are the antithesis of Jordan's Bulls teams which captivated both NBA fans and casual observers. I expect game 2 will get clobbered by the Sopranos finale. If the Spurs go up 2-0, you can probably throw the ratings for games 3 & 4 in the garbage too.
I've always felt that the African American community and other minority groups households have always been underrepresented by Nielsen.
i been watching almost all of the playof games till now but i just suddenly have no interest in watching the finals. it's like guaranteed the spurs are going to win. cavs have no stinking chance. the nba lost out when miami, dallas, and phoenix didnt advance. it's not the fact that spurs are that boring..it's just no one wants to watch a game that has no competition.
Mavs choking was one the highlights in the playoffs. And I bet many wanted to see that Warriors/Suns WCF. Besides, if Wade/Shaq vs Mavs could barely do better than Spurs/Pistons, a Cavs team that plays as bad as offense as we do wouldn't save it either.
The genius of David Stern is that he foresaw that local TV revenues alone wouldn't sustain the NBA forever, so he's created a huge international fan base over the last two decades that generates billions of dollars for the league. Like someone mentioned, ratings are down everywhere. They may be extra depressed this year, because, frankly, it is a very boring finals, but the last thing the league needs to do is start messing with the rules within the season to try and manufacture a highly rated finals.
Cleveland has a small fan following. San Antonio has a small fan following. Nobody really cares outside of those two towns who wins. If it had been the Showtime Lakers vs Rockets that would have been a high draw. Any of the four biggest cities matched up would have been a ratings draw. New York, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles.
Are the ratings only considering the households in the US? Suppose the rockets get to the finals with Yao. Would that skew the ratings if Chinese population watches? Even in the US only, there might be a huge asian interest which would otherwise not be there.
Actually, I watched the game. I was just giving my explanation on why the ratings were low. And if your second part was the case, I wouldn't have watched any of the Rockets game then would I?
I watched to see what Lebron might do, but pretty quickly I was having trouble watching what was a very boring game. Pretty soon the NBA finals will be on cable like the rest of the playoffs.
did bowen get suspended for going after amare's ankle? and didn't duncan leave the bench during a minor altercation at one point in the series? howbout the ridiculous number of calls going in ginobli's way tyhe whole playoffs?
Are there stats to back this up or is this just the impression you get because the ratings are low for programming that you think a lot of minorities would be watching?
