The American and National League Division Series games were watched in an average of 3.8 percent of the 111.4 million U.S. households with televisions, TBS said. Last year, the postseason games averaged a 3.2 rating on News Corp.'s Fox and Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN and ESPN2.

"Normally you would say the ratings would increase as the series go longer, but we garnered the ratings with sweeps in three of the four series," David Levy, president of Time Warner's Turner Sports, said in an interview. "The start times allowed the fan to get the most opportunities to watch games."

The Boston Red Sox defeated the Los Angeles Angels in three games in the best-of-five series. It also took three games for the Colorado Rockies to beat the Philadelphia Phillies and the Arizona Diamondbacks to top the Chicago Cubs.

Only the Cleveland Indians-New York Yankees playoff lasted longer than the minimum, with Cleveland needing four games to oust New York.

TBS and baseball started games closer to primetime and eliminated the 1 p.m. New York game during the week. All the games were shown on TBS and start times were spread out to try to avoid any overlap with another game in progress.