NBA Finals Get Lowest Ratings
NBC is finally feeling the effect of the post-Michael Jordan era, with its lowest ratings ever in the NBA Finals.
After the lowest Game 1 rating in 13 years, NBC posted a 10.0 preliminary rating for Game 2 between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs on Friday night, the network said Sunday.
The overnight rating represents 64 percent of the country. The national rating will be released Monday.
The 10.0 rating was 44 percent lower than last year's Game 2, between Jordan's Chicago Bulls and the Utah Jazz, and 21 percent lower than the second game in 1994 between the Knicks and Houston Rockets.
The 1994 final (12.4 rating), the last season to be played entirely without Jordan, was NBC's lowest rated in its eight years of showing the NBA.
"Right now, after basically a decade of the greatest athlete of this generation, we're due for a building year," NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol said, "and this may be ours."
"My thought was we'd be off 25-30 percent. When it's all over, if it goes six games we'll be right there. If it's a four-game sweep, we'll be lower."
The combination of Jordan's retirement, the lockout, two uncompetitive games and ugly basketball, have kept viewers away.
NBC was helped by competitive six-game series the last two years and the speculation that Jordan could retire. Six of the eight highest-rated finals involved Jordan's Bulls.
This year, the network has San Antonio, the smallest market in the NBA, and a banged-up Knicks team playing without Patrick Ewing and with a hobbling Larry Johnson.
"We're not a medic unit," Ebersol said. "We can't deal with the injuries of Ewing and Johnson. We'll wish for a competitive game to put us back in line."
Ebersol says the network won't have to give make-good spots to advertisers who were expecting higher ratings because of better-than-expected numbers in the regular season and earlier playoff rounds.
Fox was forced to provide extra spots after the World Series, which was a four-game sweep and the lowest-rated ever.
"We so over performed our guarantees for the regular season and earlier rounds that we have no problems," Ebersol said. "We just have the problem of any series, we want more than four games. That's up to the gods."
NBC's ratings were 16 percent lower for the first three rounds of the playoffs and 7 percent lower in the regular season.
©1999 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed