A little TV rating news for your Thursday afternoon, with the Cubs once again showing up as the top primetime show in Chicago when they’re on.
Also, the Cubs aren’t alone:
Major League Baseball ranks #1 in cable prime time in every US MLB market except Miami https://t.co/CgvXd7DlUx
— Maury Brown (@BizballMaury) July 19, 2018
Baseball, regionally-speaking, is doing very well everywhere except in Miami. And in Chicago – and ten other markets – baseball gets the top billing in primetime on any channel, not just cable. It’s a useful reminder when you see the stories about attendance and ratings being down for the sport – it’s all still relative to the rest of the entertainment market. Baseball ain’t doin’ so bad.
As for the Cubs, specifically, in terms of households tuning in, only the Yankees, Mets*, and Red Sox get more viewers on average than the Cubs, and the Cubs have the 7th best local rating in MLB (not easy to do in a large market – by contrast, the young, exciting, popular, and awesome Yankees are 9th).
At a time when the Cubs continue to navigate the complicated cable/streaming waters to land their next big broadcast rights deal, it remains a good thing – regardless of what direction the Cubs ultimately go after 2019 – to have strong ratings.
*(Obviously being in a huge market helps your raw number of households tuning in … )