The annual audience battle between the pigskin and the horsehide is underway.
And you don’t need a master’s degree in Nielsen to predict NFL and college football will handily beat postseason Major League Baseball in TV audience coverage.
How many sports fans tuned out Ole Miss’ upset win over Alabama on Saturday to watch the start of the San Francisco Giants-Washington Nationals game? Early reports from Nielsen show not many.
Still, longtime baseball fans have to be impressed and entertained with what has happened on screens thus far.
Highlights:
• The continuing royal performance by Kansas City, making its first postseason appearance in 29 years. The team grabbed national fan attention Tuesday night with a rousing 12-inning wild-card win against Oakland before delirious home fans who acted as though their team had won the World Series.
• It’s in the cards that St. Louis and the Los Angeles Dodgers, longtime National League rivals, will battle five games before the winner goes on to the NL Championship Series. Game 1: a slugfest. Game 2: a pitchers’ duel.
• San Francisco took a giant step toward the NLCS by beating Washington in 18 innings while setting a record for the longest playoff game in history: 6 hours and 23 minutes.
For football fans accustomed to seeing Aaron Rodgers and Peyton Manning play at breakneck speed, this game was a snoozer. But dedicated baseball devotees could sit in their chairs, enjoying the varying strategies that dominated the marathon.
This baseball playoff coverage has reinforced my opinion that TBS’s Ernie Johnson is one of the most underrated talents in sports broadcasting.
Johnson, known basically these days as a traffic cop during TNT’s NBA studio coverage, has been superb in his in-the-booth coverage of the Kansas City games.
He lets Cal Ripken Jr. and Ron Darling, former major-leaguers, describe the pitches and hitting styles. Johnson concentrates on the subtle nuances of the game, including important historical perspectives.
He noted that the majority of the hustling Royals weren’t born when the team last went to the playoffs in 1985.
Nielsen will tell us this week how much of a dent, if any, baseball has made into NFL TV coverage.
A major barometer: TBS was back at Kansas City on Sunday night for the important third Angels-Royals battle.
Meanwhile, NBC’s ratings-rich Sunday night football package offered a must-see matchup: Bengals at Patriots.
More horsehide. Need another Derek Jeter retirement fix?
“60 Minutes Sports” (8 p.m. Tuesday, Showtime) offers a perspective on his life and career that digs a bit deeper than recent TV coverage. A highlight: a 2005 “60 Minutes” profile by the late Ed Bradley, who gets Jeter, above, to talk about what makes him tick.
Longtime Denver journalist Dusty Saunders writes about sports media each Monday in The Denver Post. Contact him at tvtime@comcast.net.
Spinning the dial for baseball
Remember when it was easy to find the channels for Major League Baseball playoffs?
Two channels, Fox and TBS, regularly offered coverage.
Now we have five channels.
TBS remains consistent, covering all American League games through the championship series.
While Fox is still involved, Fox Sports 1 is now in the mix, along with the MLB Network. The last is not found on some basic cable services, thus producing complaints from unhappy fans.
And occasionally, Fox Sports 2 gets into the mix when National League games overlap.
Such scheduling, which ignores the consumer interest, is a direct result of MLB’s desire for profit. The Fox organization paid big bucks to get a huge piece of the baseball pie.
