TV Ratings Improving

At the bottom of Curt Cavin's Friday article in The Indianapolis Star comes this nugget:

The Izod IndyCar Series received better news, according to Sports Media Watch. 

Viewership on Versus has increased 24 percent over the past five races, with the average for those races 428,000. The media watchdog said that number is higher than the NHL's average on Versus (297,000) or the WNBA's average on ESPN2 (290,000).

Yes, having under half a million viewers still isn't where the series needs to be.  But if viewership continues to increase, and the series can once again have a naturally suspenseful end to the season, it puts the league in a good position when TV contracts come up, especially when the key male 18-32 demographic is trending upwards.

Versus' coverage of the series has been universally praised, and if the Comcast-owned channel becomes a partner with NBC Sports after the NBC Universal-Comcast merger, the series is poised to return to network television.  Increased ratings only help this argument for returning to network.

For more details on the ratings surge, click here.

On the TV

So the Versus telecast of the IndyCar Series race at Mid-Ohio brought in a 0.2 rating last Sunday. It scored a 2.2 locally in Indianapolis.

You can read the full story here, courtesy of the Indianapolis Business Journal.

What can we read into that? I have no idea, to be honest, other than to say that the ratings have been remarkably consistent when on Versus. Broadcasts on ABC will obviously have higher numbers because the casual TV viewer will come across ABC, whereas on Versus it takes more work to find the station.

Regardless of how high the rating is, the IndyCar Series will have a consistent number to take to sponsors in the offseason. How the sponsors look at the possibility of getting their product to just 225,000 viewers or so remains to be seen.

Stay Inside and Watch the TV, Please

The Indiana Business Journal is reporting that the TV ratings from Edmonton went up slightly from those at Richmond – moving from a .22 to a .24 on the network. The Score, the IBJ’s sports blog, speculates that part of the reason for the low ratings is the dominance of both Penske Racing and Target-Chip Ganassi Racing (something I theorized a few weeks ago).

While the Penske/Ganassi domination correlating into low TV ratings is something we will explore in further depth in the offseason, some of the reason for the ratings being lower is that some of the racing audience in the most heavily-saturated racing market (Indianapolis) was at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Brickyard 400 ended shortly before Versus went on the air from the Rexall Edmonton Indy, and I doubt that many of the people who wanted to watch the race actually saw it live since they were stuck in traffic leaving IMS.

Sure, not all 180,000 people at the track would have watched the Rexall Edmonton Indy, but even if 30,000 of those people did, the ratings would have improved.

I think the biggest test of Versus ratings will come this week, when the series heads to Mid-Ohio. Coming off of the closest major racing finish of the year, and one that received air time on every ESPN station, the IndyCar Series will have some considerable buzz leading into a track that honestly, may be a boring race.

But if Versus is able to take the highlights which were shown nationally and are able to market the IndyCar Series as a thrilling brand of racing (even on Mid-Ohio), then the debate over TV ratings may subside for a week.