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TBS banking on smaller-market teams’ drawing power in NL series
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All those fans tuning into the National League division series games to see the Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies received an introduction to the young, exciting teams that eliminated them.
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Major League Baseball and Turner Sports executives now must hope the exposure translates into viewers for the NL championship series between two clubs with less tradition and from smaller markets: the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.
TBS’s foray into televising playoff baseball drew strong ratings despite quick endings for the opening-round series.
The 13 games attracted an average of 5.7 million viewers on the cable network. That was a 26 percent increase over last year’s figures, which included games available to more people on over-the-air TV on Fox as well as cable broadcasts on ESPN.
“We are extremely ecstatic, if you will,” Turner Sports president David Levy said Tuesday.
“We didn’t believe with three of the four series being sweeps that we’d get these kinds of numbers,” Levy said.
The division series included teams from the nation’s four-largest TV markets: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia. The Yankees, Angels, Cubs and Phillies were all eliminated.
The Boston Red Sox, boasting a large national fan base and hailing from the seventh-largest market, remain.
They are joined in the ALCS, which airs on Fox, by Cleveland (the No. 17 market).
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