NLCS on Fox Sports 1

[Norm loves Vera]

I will be watching the pregame of the WC after reading this tweet:
 
Chad Finn ‏@GlobeChadFinn 10m10 minutes ago
Fox has added David Ortiz to its pre- and postgame studio teams for the first two games of the World Series.
 
then this nugget minutes after that tweet by Chad:
 
Retweeted by Chad Finn
Mark McNamara ‏@MarkMcn81 13m13 minutes ago
@GlobeChadFinn Just a matter of time before Ortiz asks Fox to pick up his contract for games 3 and 4, right?
 
hilarious..
 
Edit to add second tweet!

 

[Spacemans Bong]

 
This past season's local ratings for the NBA aren't a great barometer because of how terribly, or at least well-below expectations, so many major market teams performed on the court, (LAL, NYK, BOS, PHI, CHI).  But you said "paper thin" local interest and that's simply not true.
 
FWIW, an additional factor is that NBA teams have more premium games broadcast exclusively nationally (such as TNT Thursday nights and ABC weekends & holidays) than MLB teams.  So it harms the local ratings for, say, San Antonio when 10-12 of their best games aren't telecast on their regional cable sports network.  Baseball teams have fewer exclusive national games (ESPN Sunday night, FOX weekend) relative to the total amount of games that are telecast. It's a wrinkle that has an impact.

 
Yeah, those four markets had tremendous baseball seasons. I take your point about national games, but I think that's countered by the season length and those weekday games that NBA teams just don't play.
 
The Red Sox were drawing 9 or 10 locally in 2008, were the Celtics at that level? Linmania was getting MSG about 300K viewers a night, the Yankees got 337K this year with a tepid team on the fringes of playoff contention.

 

[DourDoerr]

Yeah they also have a version of this called MLB Strike Zone. Similar to the Red Zone, but it's only on Tuesday and Friday nights. Basically the same thing as the live look ins that MLB runs on the nights they don't broadcast games except more actually coverage and less talking heads.

Thanks for the heads up JimD and YTF.  NFL's Red Zone uses a team entering the red zone as the reason to cut to that game - what does Strike Zone use as their criteria? 

 

[The Social Chair]

 
Yeah, those four markets had tremendous baseball seasons. I take your point about national games, but I think that's countered by the season length and those weekday games that NBA teams just don't play.
 
The Red Sox were drawing 9 or 10 locally in 2008, were the Celtics at that level? Linmania was getting MSG about 300K viewers a night, the Yankees got 337K this year with a tepid team on the fringes of playoff contention.

 
This makes the strong argument that baseball is a regional sport. Local MLB ratings are 2-3X the ratings of the local NBA team, but the NBA Conference finals are almost 2x as large as the MLB LCS. 

 

[bankshot1]

I'll be curious to see the ratings for Pats/Jets on CBS/NFL v Giants/Cards on Fox1
 
I expect an NFL ratings blow-out.