Posted at 12:37 p.m., Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Who's watching hockey? Not many
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Anaheim's 3-2 victory over Ottawa in the opener of the Stanley Cup finals got a 0.72 cable rating on Versus and was watched in 523,000 households in the United States.The rating was down 18 percent from Carolina's 5-4 victory over Edmonton in last year's opener, which received a 0.88 cable rating (611,000 homes) on OLN, as the same network was known then.
This year's game had a 1.7 cable rating in Los Angeles (95,000 households), Versus' best NHL rating in that market. The game had a 0.7 cable rating in Chicago, 0.6 in Boston and 0.3 in New York, but had a 3.9 in Buffalo, 2.2 in Denver and 2.0 in Pittsburgh.
Versus, which is available to 72 million homes, also was slated to televise Game 2 today, with the remainder of the series on NBC.
The rating for Sunday's rain-interrupted and rain-shortened Indy 500 on ABC dropped 16 percent, to 4.3 from 5.1 last year. NASCAR's Coca-Cola 600, televised by Fox from 5:45 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. EDT, had a 4.5 rating, down 12 percent from last year's 5.1. The Coca-Cola 600 has had a larger TV audience than the Indy 500 for seven straight years.
