There's a fair amount of hand-wringing over the poor ratings for the World Series after two games. In the DMN, for example, Barry Horn goes through various bits of gloomy data, and ends with this:
If I was Channel 4, I'd talk to the Cowboys about filming today's walk- through at Texas Stadium and broadcast that instead of the World Series.
So, yeah...my reaction to this is...who cares?
I mean, why should I, as a baseball fan, care whether or not the World Series gets good ratings?
I can see why I would care about whether the Rangers' local broadcasts get good ratings, since good ratings means more revenues, and more revenues means more money that can be spent on the team, and that will (generally speaking) mean a better product and more wins.
But whether or not the national audience is watching the Phillies and Rays...why should I give a rat's ass?
The downside, I guess, is more gimmicky stuff like Scooter and more jacked up starting times and the like. And the reality is that MLB could care less about catering to me, in terms of their TV presentations. MLB is going to cater to the marginal audience, the "persuadables" to borrow the parlance of this election cycle. MLB wants to bend over backwards to try to attract the people who aren't particularly interest in baseball, or the Rays, or the Phillies. Those are the folks it is knocking itself out to appeal to.
Me? MLB could care less about trying to appeal to me. And to most of you, I'd wager. MLB knows that we're the type of people who are going to watch the World Series no matter what. MLB (and its broadcast partners) takes the hard-core fan for granted, and many of the things we find so irritating are efforts by those folks to bring in the casual or non-fans.
So what the ratings indicate is the casual and non-fans aren't watching. Which isn't something that I see should end up impacting me.