Apparently the Red Sox ratings on NESN are noteworthy even down in New York.
Neil Best, the intrepid sports media writer and blogger for Newsday.com has the following note:
The Sox’ average game rating is 8.92 percent of homes in the Boston area, down 6.8 percent from 9.57 at this point last season.
He then also makes the following observation:
Red Sox games regularly attract a higher percentage of the Boston market than what the Yankees and Mets average combined in New York.
I know population factors into it, but that is still pretty interesting.
Popularity: 7% [?]
I think if you pull out non-english speakers and control for race, it might show a little different. Whether its ‘EEI, CSN or similar, they all benefit from the homogeneity of this marketplace.
Red Sox games regularly attract a higher percentage of the Boston market than what the Yankees and Mets average combined in New York.
If it is a percentage of market, how does population factor into it?
I know I worded it poorly. The population comment was more about the fact that 8% of 600,000 would be less than say, 4% of 8,000,000. If NY is the latter and Boston the former, someone can say that more people are watching the Yankees/Mets then are the Red Sox. If you’ve got eight million people you’ve got a lot more diversity and people not interested in baseball or sports. As Ben points out above, the stations here in Boston benefit from that. That’s why WFAN gets lower ratings than WEEI, but obviously more people listen to WFAN.
I probably should’ve said something like “Population needs to be factored into the equation.”