"King James" Can't Save NBA Finals Rating

The NBA's poster boy has been unable to help increase the league's playoff ratings, as after 2 games, the Cleveland Cavaliers and San Antonio Spurs appear headed to the lowest rating in the history of the NBA Finals.

After a 6.3 Nielsen rating for Game 1 on ABC - the lowest in the league's history - Commissioner David Stern had to be expecting better than the 6.9 that MSNBC.com is reporting for Game 2. That number is down a whopping 14 percent from last year's 8.0 that the Miami Heat and Dallas Mavericks. That game also drew approximately 12.4 million viewers, while Sunday's game on ABC drew somewhere in the vicinity of 8 million viewers.

Though it's difficult to think that the NBA lost viewership thanks to the Tony Awards on CBS (approximately a 4.5 rating), the organization was likely hurt by The Sopranos finale on HBO, which drew an overnight rating of 6.4 according to Variety. Of course, all of these overnight ratings are incomplete and subject to change, as the overnight ratings only cover the top 55 markets in the United States.

The 6.6 average Nielsen rating is just .1 higher than the Spurs-Nets final from 2003, according to Sports Media Watch.

Low ratings are nothing new to the NBA in the 21st century, as 5 of the 10 lowest rated NBA Finals all occurred during this century. None of the recent finals have come close to matching the 18.7 that Michael Jordan's ever-popular Bulls team pulled off in beating the Utah Jazz in the 1998 finals.

Low ratings are nothing new to broadcast television over the course of this year, according to CNN, as all stations are showing losses in viewership over the same time-frame last year, The rise in the use of DVRs, the increase in number of choices, and the lack of quality programming have all been cited as reasons for the decline.

Live sports events have been hardest hit by the recent trend towards lower ratings, as the World Series and Stanley Cup Finals have struggled mightily in recent years to maintain viewership, according to both Zap2it and USA Today. According to MSNBC, only the NFL has managed to maintain high ratings in recent years, as this past year's Super Bowl between Indianapolis and Chicago saw the second highest number of viewers of any television program in history. The only other more highly-watched program was the Super Bowl in 2004 before the New England Patriots and Carolina Panthers.

Sources:

MSNBC, Did 'Sopranos' whack Game 2 of NBA Finals?, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19177679/