ALCS gets highest ratings since ’04

AP- Major
League Baseball and Fox Sports executives don’t have to wonder about the
ratings a World Series between small-market teams from
Cleveland
and

Colorado
would have drawn.

Instead,
they can bask in strong viewership numbers for the American League championship
series won by the Red Sox, a club from a big market with a large national
following.

Boston
faces the Colorado Rockies in the World Series starting Wednesday.

“I
don’t care what sport it is. There are a few national teams in any league, and
if you get a national team in a series, it naturally improves the
ratings,” Fox Sports president Ed Goren said Monday.

What also
improves ratings is a long series.

Sunday
night’s Game 7 drew an 11.7 rating, which was 8 percent better than the 10.8
earned by last year’s NLCS Game 7 between the St. Louis Cardinals and New York
Mets. It was the highest-rated LCS game since 2004.

The series
attracted an average 7.4 rating, a 37 percent increase over the 5.4 for the
four-game sweep by the Detroit Tigers of the Oakland A’s in last year’s ALCS.
It was the highest-rated ALCS not involving a Red Sox-Yankees matchup since
2001 (Yankees-Mariners).

The
Rockies’ NLCS sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks on TBS
drew an average 2.8 rating for all households and a 3.3 for homes with the
cable network.

When the
Red Sox’s 11-2 win over the Indians ended at 11:45 p.m. on Sunday night, 57
percent of households in the

Boston
area — and 86 percent of homes with the TV on — were tuned in.