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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

‘95 World Series Ratings Trail ‘93’S

Associated Press

Overnight ratings for Game 1 of the World Series were down 4 percent from two years ago, Nielsen Media Research said Sunday.

Atlanta’s 3-2 victory over Cleveland on Saturday night got a 16.0 rating and a 28 share in the 33 major markets used for the overnights. When the previous World Series was played in 1993, the opener between Toronto and Philadelphia got a 16.7 overnight rating.

National ratings will not be available until today or Tuesday. Nationally, each rating point represents 959,000 homes.

In Cleveland, the game got a 43.2 rating and a 64 share. In Atlanta, it got a 43.3 rating and a 65 share.

The rating is the percentage of television households tuned to a program. The share is the percentage watching a broadcast among those televisions on at the time.

Saturday night’s game began at 7:31 p.m. EDT, an hour earlier than World Series games in recent years, and that may have contributed to the ratings decline.

The number of viewers climbed steadily throughout the evening. The first half hour had a 13.8 rating, and the 8-8:30 p.m. period had a 15.1. It was followed by a 15.9, a 16.6, a 17.8 and an 18.2 for the end of the game, shortly after 10 p.m. EDT.