Apparently not. At least on television. Ratings for the just-concluded, much-ballyhooed Subway Series between the Mets and New York Yankees ended up being the lowest in World Series history.

Fox, which has signed a brand new $2.5 billion deal with Major League Baseball that includes all postseason games for the next six years, didn't deliver the numbers promised to advertisers. It now will have to provide make-good commercials during its prime-time entertainment programming. The average audience for the five-game series ended up being 18.1 million, a drop of 24 per cent from last season.

Unlike previous years, the late start of this fall's TV season meant that baseball on Fox had to compete against premieres of many new and returning shows, which also took viewers away. The one bright spot: While ratings are down, Fox did beat the competition in landing the important adult 18- to 49-year-old audience segment.

It is more than baseball though. There is now clear evidence that the majority of sports programming on TV is losing viewers. Despite the initial hype from the addition of comedian Mr Dennis Miller to the broadcast booth of "Monday Night Football" and several close games, ABC's average audience for the games is down 6 per cent to 18.2 million through the first eight weeks of the season, from 19.3 million.

It is a similar story for CBS and Fox, both of which carry National Football League games. Ratings for CBS's coverage of the American Football Conference are down 8 per cent to 13 million, from 14.2 million at the same time last season. Fox's average audience has slipped 5 per cent to 14.8 million, from 15.6 million, for its coverage of the National Football Conference.

There are many reasons for the drop in sports programming, according to academics, media buyers and industry executives. With the growth of cable, there is now a proliferation of sports on television, which has taken away the cachet such events used to have with the audience.

"We're beginning to see sports eroding, because it is available everywhere," says Mr Stacey Lynn Koerner, vice-president of True North Communications' TN Media unit.

But not all of the declines can be linked just to more channels. In the case of baseball, the games tend to drag on. During the World Series, the games didn't start until 8:30 pm. Eastern time at the earliest and usually ran until midnight or later. While that means more commercials, it also gives more opportunities for the audience to tune out.

"Broadcasters have passed on the higher cost of sports to advertisers" by adding more commercials and increasing the costs to advertise, says Mr Rick Burton, head of the University of Oregon's Warsaw Sports Marketing Center in Portland. The end result, he says, is that younger viewers, who are considered as much less passive than older fans, bail on the games.

"The delays within the games are terrible," says Mr Bill Sutton, programme director of the sports-studies department at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. If baseball is going to get its audience back, he adds, the game needs to be speeded up.

The Wall Street Journal