The Game - World Series Lights Up Friday Night


Who says people are abandoning their TV sets on Friday nights? Give them something worthwhile to watch, it would seem, and they'll tune in. And tune in they did en masse Friday for the seventh and deciding game of the World Series on Fox. According to a network press release, an average of 25.4 million viewers (peaking in the final half-hour with 29.7 million) watched the game in which the St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Texas Rangers 6-2, making it the most-watched series game since 2004 when 28.8 million watched the Boston Red Sox end their 86-year Series drought by beating the Cards in four straight games.

In St. Louis, the telecast beat Super Bowl records as an average of 80 percent of all TV sets in the area were tuned in to the telecast, peaking in the final half hour with 89 percent. Ratings for the final game are likely to be adjusted upwards when final results are disclosed today (Monday). Fox said that Game 7 represented the single highest-rated Friday night telecast in the network's history.

Surprisingly, the game did not suck as many viewers away from NBC's season debut of Grimm as was expected. The drama averaged 6.49 million viewers and came in second in its time period among adults 18-49. TV ratings analyst Marc Berman said on his TV Media Insights blog that the result represented the "top rating in adults 18-49 for a Friday non-sports telecast on any network since December 21, 2010." And despite yanking original episodes of its Friday-night shows and replacing them with reruns, CBS took second place for the night among total adults with an average of 6.89 million viewers, peaking at 10 00 p.m. with 7.94 million viewers for CSI New York .