Chemistry Schmemistry said:
I can't help it if you're going to stick your fingers in your ears and sing every time I quote the facts. Whatever makes you happy.
I don't think you understand the difference between correlation and causation. You have given no evidence that it is the wild card specifically causing a decline in World Series viewership. The evidence you think you've given, the timing of the decline in ratings with the implementation of the wild card, has many, many critics because it has many, many logical holes. For one, according to that chart up there, the highest-rated World Series in the last 20 years was after the wild card was in effect. Secondly, and perhaps most critically, the wild card was implemented in the same year that baseball destroyed itself with the strike. How can you prove that your timing of the World Series declines in viewership isn't owing to once-casual fans abandoning the sport entirely because after the strike, the found they enjoy doing other things more?
Further, your argument has a logical hole in that you argue the wild card keeps people interested in their own teams for longer, but if their own teams were out of contention early... they would follow other teams more closely? What? Why? Why would people be compelled to invest months of time and energy into the competitors of the team they love most? In the past, most people didn't get to watch baseball every day. National games were a chance to see baseball and the stars they'd only had a chance to read or hear about. Now they can watch literally every game played every day, if they're motivated to do so. You can't re-capture that sense of scarcity. Stop televising every game and you lose way more fans than gain them. There's just a crapload more things to do and a seven-game series takes a long time to watch. I'm a watch-every-day kind of die-hard Giants fan and I didn't even watch most of Game Four. I was at a super-fancy Halloween party.
We've all provided you with a ton of evidence that baseball is an incredibly healthy, thriving sport in most ways. I don't think we're the ones sticking our fingers in our ears.