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Kansas City Passes St. Louis In MLB TV Ratings

Jason Barrett

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Best baseball town in America?

Well, at least according to the television ratings, St. Louis isn’t even No. 1 in its own state.

According to figures compiled by Nielsen, which measures viewership, Kansas City is rocking St. Louis in ratings for postseason games. That’s when it comes to recent appearances by the home-town team in the league championship round and World Series.

Last year, the Royals were in the Series for the first time since they beat the Cardinals for the 1985 title. And the rating in Kansas City averaged a whopping 50.2 for their loss in seven games to San Francisco. (That means 50.2 percent of homes in the market with a TV tuned in.)

In 2013, the last time the Cards were in the Series, the St. Louis rating was 40.6. The Redbirds lost in six games to Boston that year, with the Red Sox building a big early lead in the final contest and cruising to victory which pulled the rating for that game down to 37.9.

That’s logical. But what is more telling is the time before that when they were in the Series — in 2011, capping their miracle run to the championship after being all but dead in late August. That series, the dramatic seven-game affair in which they had their miraculous comeback to win Game 6, drew a 47.2 rating locally.

And the St. Louis rating then for Game 7 — a winner — was 52.7. The Royals drew a 58.7 number in KC for their Game 7 — a loser — last year.

In the ongoing American League championship series, the rating in Kansas City is 30.5 — and that is with back-to-back weekday afternoon games. The ALCS rating there last year was 31.9. The Cardinals’ last two trips to the National League title series (2014 and 2013) drew ratings in St. Louis of 23.5 and 28.9.

All this comes on the heels of Kansas City leading all U.S. teams this season in ratings for the teams’ local telecasts, with a rating of 12.3. St. Louis was second, at 10.0.

But let’s take a deeper look.

The reason for all of this probably is the bandwagon effect. Postseason baseball is a novelty in KC but has been a way of life in St. Louis. Before last season, the Royals hadn’t been to the playoffs in 29 years, whereas the Cardinals’ appearance this year was their 14th in that span.

And the ratings trend doesn’t translate to the turnstiles. Attendance the last two seasons in St. Louis has been 3.5 million. In Kansas City, it was 1.9 million in 2014 and 2.7 million this year.

And Missouri’s biggest market did do better in the TV ratings than its No. 2 city in the recently completed first round of the playoffs. The St. Louis rating was 25.4, the number in KC was 23.1. But the Cards were playing their biggest rival, the Cubs, for the first time in the postseason. The Royals had a matchup with the Astros, who were completing just their third season in the American League.

A more apt comparison: Last year, for the Cards’ opening-round matchup with the Dodgers, the St. Louis rating was 19.5. The year before, against Pittsburgh, it was 16.4.

To read the rest of this article visit STL Today where it was originally published

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RGIII to Danny Kanell: ‘Do Some Research, You’re Embarrassing Yourself’

“Griffin laid out some recent facts about the Buffs since Sanders arrived and chalked the former ESPN Radio host up as a hater.”

Jordan Bondurant

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Robert Griffin III and Danny Kanell

The Deion Sanders-coached Colorado Buffaloes got another taste of top-ranked college football on Saturday and were humbled in a 42-6 blowout loss.

To some, including SiriusXM College Sports Radio host Danny Kanell, seeing Sanders, his sons and their team embarrassed on a national platform was good because it will quell some of the buzz around the program as a potential national power on the rise. There has been much hype and fanfare surrounding the program in Boulder since hiring Sanders as their head coach in the spring.

Oregon head coach Dan Lanning went viral ahead of the Ducks game, telling his team in their locker room pre-game that Sanders and the Buffaloes were out trying to get clicks while the Ducks were trying to get wins.

ESPN’s Robert Griffin III on Saturday evening tweeted that Lanning was just trying to do his job in the moment, which was hype his kids up to play a high-profile game and folks were eating it up. He wondered why Sanders was getting hate for essentially doing the same thing.

Kanell quote tweeted RGIII saying ESPN had grown an affinity for Sanders, and people loved what they saw from Oregon because they were tired of so much coverage of Colorado.

Griffin laid out some recent facts about the Buffs since Sanders arrived and chalked the former ESPN Radio host up as a hater.

Danny responded asking why Griffin hadn’t jumped on the bandwagons of other turnaround programs like Tulane, Duke and Kansas, before RGII posted a screenshot from 2021 of him showing support for the direction head coach Lance Leipold was taking the Jayhawks. Griffin mentioned the fact that he was on the broadcast of Tulane’s upset win over USC in the Cotton Bowl in January and that he has given his stance on Duke.

The back and forth continued into Sunday, where Kanell posted some screenshots of his own tweets where he has not been overly critical or hating on Sanders.

But Griffin appeared to get the final word, posting a clip of Kanell throwing an interception on Monday Night Football back in the day when he was quarterback of the New York Giants.

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More Than 5000 Attend Barstool Pizzafest Amid Washington Post Controversy

“Everyone had a great time. The vibes were actually probably higher because of the controversy surrounding it.”

Jordan Bondurant

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Barstool Pizza Fest
Courtesy: Barstool

With the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia bearing down on New York City and a wave of buzz surrounding Barstool founder Dave Portnoy in the days leading in, some 5,000 people braved the elements to attend the One Bite Pizza Festival in Brooklyn on Saturday.

Portnoy went viral last week after he posted video of himself calling Washington Post food reporter Emily Heil to confront her and ask why she and the pave had been contacting festival sponsors and asking them how they feel about Portnoy’s past controversies.

Participating pizzerias and sponsors also faced pressure to back out from other food writers and Barstool critics. But Portnoy told FOX & Friends Weekend on Sunday that the festival was a rousing success.

“It couldn’t have gone better,” he said. “It was our Woodstock moment with the rain. We had 5,000 people strong. Everyone had a great time. The vibes were actually probably higher because of the controversy surrounding it.”

Dave added that he owed the pizzerias a debt of gratitude for standing strong against those trying to shame them out of the event.

“The thing about the hit pieces, what they try to do, whether it’s those or the Washington Post, if you can get one sponsor to drop, one pizza place to drop – which none of them did so I owe them a huge thank you – that becomes a story in itself,” he said.

“They don’t deserve this,” Portnoy added. “They’re just trying to promote their small business, and they’re being put in this box.”

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Mina Kimes: Deshaun Watson ‘Bailed Out Our Entire Industry by Being Bad’

“If he was playing well, I would be inundated by hate mail right now because that’s what happens

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Mina Kimes
Courtesy: ESPN Images

Mina Kimes was not alone in condemning the Cleveland Browns for signing Deshaun Watson to a record guaranteed contract as he was facing dozens of accusations of sexual misconduct. This is the first full season Watson has played for the Browns and he has been less than impressive through the first two weeks of the season.

Kimes says that in a strange way, it something she and her colleagues should be happy about.

“This dude just bailed out our entire industry by being bad,” she said this week on Pablo Torre Finds Out.

She said that she has talked to a number of fellow NFL analysts and writers that feel “a little bit of relief” that there is nothing about Watson to celebrate right now.

It isn’t lost on Kimes that maybe not having to talk about Deshaun Watson like he is any other star in the NFL isn’t necessarily a good thing.

“We never had to reckon with, and maybe we will. You know, it’s been two weeks, but we certainly haven’t, so far, had to reckon with that cognitive dissonance in what it would have entailed,” she said.”

Winning and outstanding performance can scrub clean a lot of scandal in the minds of the public. Kimes noted that even mentioning the allegations against Watson would be met very differently if he weren’t struggling.

“Right now, because he’s playing bad, because he’s playing poorly, if you were to put a clip of me saying something about the fact that he was accused of all these sexual crimes and misdemeanors and whatnot, and if you put that out now, I would not get heat,” she said. “That’s what I want to drill down on here. Like, if you aggregated this and put it out, I would not get hate mails. If he was playing well, I would be inundated by hate mail right now because that’s what happens.”

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