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I wasn't taking him seriously.
And it was coke a cola .
Tom Selleck is a pretty sweet actor.
I wasn't taking him seriously.
And it was coke a cola .
i don't care who watched... all i know is I watched my favorite team win an nba finals game in OT to go up 3-2 with a 3 pointer (I like the term "father's day fork)...
I watched it @ Hooters(in River Center) last night and believe you me the ratings are up!Wings are good but too much bread on it. Brianna our waiter was beautiful!
I believe this is the first time we outdrew a "Law and Order" rerun.
Good times indeed.
From today's NY Times:
June 21, 2005
What if They Held an N.B.A. Finals and No One Bothered to Watch?
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
During a timeout after Robert Horry's 3-point shot put San Antonio up for good with 5.8. seconds left in overtime in Game 5 of the N.B.A. finals against Detroit, ABC's Al Michaels said to Hubie Brown, his partner on the broadcast, "Classic."
The game, Brown said, "has been absolutely fantastic."
The thriller yielded a 10.1 preliminary overnight Nielsen rating - not great, but better than national ratings that never crept over a 7.2 for the first four games, all unwatchable blowouts. Going in, ABC Sports was hamstrung by teams whose styles of play are not snazzy and whose rosters lack magical, broadly recognizable stars. If only the Lakers were here, you could hear the N.B.A. and the network whisper.
The N.B.A. finals have become like "The 4400," the USA Network science-fiction series in which a spaceship releases 4,400 people, who have been abducted over several decades, to lives unalterably changed. Each returns with special powers.
It appears that someone has abducted the fans who used to watch the N.B.A. finals, and time will tell if they will return like hoops-crazy Harry Potters with N.B.A. logos zapped by lightning into their rubber foreheads. Those missing viewers appear to have departed year after year since Michael Jordan's last appearance in the finals, in 1998 with the Bulls; those finals generated a viewership of 29 million. In the post-Jordan era, finals viewership has never been better than 18.9 million, when the Lakers beat the Sixers in 2001, meaning a loss of 10.1 million viewers. Where have they gone? Can they all be victims of the erosion of network viewership, or is something more sinister afoot?
Last year, viewership stood at 17.9 million when the Pistons beat the Lakers. In 2002, when the Lakers beat the Nets, it was 15.7 million. In 2003, the Spurs-Nets finals had a viewership of 9.9 million.
Get the pattern? The Lakers equal survival, not like the 1990's Bulls, but better than the Nets, the Spurs or the Pistons.
That is undoubtedly why after Game 1, ABC Sports made note in a news release that "compared to the last N.B.A. finals matchup not to feature the L.A. Lakers," the 7.2 rating was 13 percent better than Game 1 of the Nets-Spurs series in 2003. Yes, that was a productive comparison. The Spurs-Pistons matchup is a low-rated series, so comparing it with one that that rated even lower was one way to obscure the obvious.
ABC has tried to prove that the best way to measure its finals success is not through ratings, which are down 35 percent from last year through the first four games, or through viewership, which is down 37 percent, but through important demographics like adults 18 to 49 and men 18 to 49.
The demographic ratings for the first four games were the highest in prime time each night, which is good for ABC, but not necessarily anything to boast about.
The series is averaging 5.8 million viewers among adults 18 to 49, down 40 percent from last year, and 3.8 million among men in that demographic, down 38 percent. Both measurements are up from 2003 - the most recent year in which the Lakers were not in the finals - but down around 40 percent in each one since 2001, when NBC carried the Lakers' defeat of the Sixers.
Where have all those coveted viewers gone?
If one compares the N.B.A. finals with "Monday Night Football," it isn't a hit. These are the finals, for Duncan's sake, not regular-season games. Yet among men 18 to 49, "Monday Night Football" rated 34 percent better this season. "Desperate Housewives," a guilty pleasure among those men, rated 17 percent higher. ABC is nonetheless pleased. "On balance, the finals are doing what ABC wants them to do," said Mark Mandel, a spokesman for ABC Sports. "We keep on winning the nights and doing well against the compe ion. We're achieving our goals."
He said that the network was not distressed by the mystery of the disappearing viewership and that it hoped to get some of those missing folks back.
"The people ABC is interested in watching are doing so, enabling the network to win the nights, thereby achieving our goals," he said.
David Stern, the N.B.A. commissioner, refused to comment.
The reasons for declining viewership are not secret: the absence of Jordan, which has permanently reshaped the league; the overabundance of the N.B.A. on cable TV, especially on ESPN, at the expense of the promotional power that NBC brought to the league; the rise of teams like Detroit, the No. 10 market, and San Antonio, ranked No. 37; and the falls from grace of the Knicks, the Lakers and the Bulls. Viewers also have numerous other choices, like video games and the Internet, to distract them from televised sports and other programming.
And so far, any new viewers that were expected to be realized by ESPN through its multimedia platforms have not materialized for ABC, its corporate sibling under the Walt Disney Corporation.
The case of the absentee finals viewers is a reversal for a league that once happily outdid the World Series - when it seemed Stern's league was eternally ascendant. The last time the finals beat the World Series, in 1998, the 29 million who watched the Chicago-Utah finals beat the 20.3 million for the Yankees-San Diego series. Since then, an annual average of nearly 6 million more viewers has watched the World Series than the N.B.A. finals.
I hate the time slot they've choses for the games. I suppose they're using the ol Monday Night Football analogy, but having all these games end after midnight (EDT) on a night before a normal workday is just stupid IMO. The "casual" fan that they're trying to attract will never stay up that late to watch the end of the game.
You know, the last time the NBA was in a "dark age," it coincided with a period when the non-glamour teams were dominating the Finals:
1975: Golden State vs. Washington
1976: Boston vs. Phoenix
1977: Portland vs. Philadelphia
1978: Washington vs. Seattle
1979: Seattle vs. Washington
In 1979, often considered the nadir of the league's popularity, the conference finalists were Seattle, Phoenix, Washington, and San Antonio. The Sixers and Lakers were the only big-market teams in the final eight.
It seems to fit perfectly. Everybody remembers the epic Celtics vs. Sixers battles in the 1960's. People remember the Lakers and the San Francisco Warriors. The St. Louis Hawks are forgotten. The Kincks and Lakers of the early 1970's, and the Celtics of the mid-'70s, are revered. The Bucks and Bullets are ignored. Everybody remembers Earl Monroe as a Knick and forgets his years as a Bullet. Everybody treats Kareem's years in Milwaukee as a prelude to his Laker career.
Every "glory" age in the NBA's history has corresponded to dominance by a big-market team. In the 1980's, more often than not the Western Conference consisted of the Lakers and a bunch of teams around the .500 mark. The '90s saw big ratings when the Bulls were in the Finals, but the Rockets' series are remembered for having the split-screen with O.J., and for having their 1995 series ignored in favor of a Jacko-Lisa Marie interview. Ratings dropped precipitously as soon as the Bulls broke up.
David Stern probably gets too much credit for what he's done with the league. He's been successful when Los Angeles, Boston, and Chicago have dominated. Whooptee-doo. Paul Tagliabue could have an Indianapolis-Seattle Super Bowl and not miss a beat. Could you imagine the carnage of a Pacers-Sonics Finals?
BTW, this has been going on for time immemorial. In 1955, the media was griping about the "boring" championship series between the Syracuse Nationals and the Fort Wayne Pistons. They wanted to see the New York Knicks or the Philadelphia Warriors, or at they very least the Minneapolis Lakers. Big-city media dislikes small-market games.
hmmm...I'm not a drug user but I thought in order to get high coke was snorted into the nose, not out. Live and learn...
omg! coke just shot out my nose!!!
I'm surprised no one noticed this unintentional pun earlier....
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