Well, this is a classic case of good news/bad news: the 2012 All-Star Game was the top-rated TV show last week, but still was the worst-rated All-Star Game ever, slightly off last year’s low.
Of course, this is a simplification of what actually transpired during the course of the game, and to reduce the numbers to a simplified winner/loser scenario may make for a good tweet but not for a more nuanced representation of the event. So let’s look at the numbers:
- When the game started, 12 million people were watching it, good for a 6.5 share.
- During the course of the game, 27.7 million tuned in at some point, up some 7 percent from last year.
- The overall game ended up with 10.9 viewers tuned in for a longer period of time, good for the best rating of the week, narrowly ahead of Amerca’s Got Talent on NBC. Still, that number was down from 11 million viewers in 2011.
Still, in the era of declining ratings and audience fragmentation, the fact the numbers are pretty stable for the MIdseason Classic is good news for MLB: the game endures.
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