Watchdog

Sorry for the slow pace of posts today. We continue to have technical difficulties with the Newsday blogosphere, but we're working on it.

The NFL announced today that it again will be flex-free in Week 14, sticking with the night game scheduled for Dec. 9 on NBC: Colts at Ravens.

The Steelers will visit the Pats, who have maxed out on their prime time allowance, at 4:15 p.m. that day in a CBS ratings-grabber.

Speaking of ratings . . . To no one's surprise, the Eagles' near-upset of the Pats Sunday night was a winner for NBC. In overnight ratings from 56 large markets, 15.6 percent of homes were tuned into the game on average.

That's the best mark in the two years of NBC's Sunday night package.

Wow. At this rate local hockey ratings will be passing the NFL any decade now!

For their eight games on FSNY, the Islanders are up spectacularly, from 0.07 percent of area homes last season at this point to 0.32.

The Rangers are up 102 percent on MSG compared to last year.

Hockey fever, catch it!

The final numbers are in for Sunday's Pats-Colts tilt, according to Sports Business Daily, and the rating was 20.1 percent of U.S. homes - which translates to about 33.8 million viewers.

That's the best for a Sunday afternoon regular-season game since the Niners and Cowboys drew 20.2 at the height of their rivalry in 1996.

Alas, the over/under betting line on the rating was 21.5, so if you had the over . . . you lost.

For all you ratings-heads out there . . . The results are in for Game 2 of the World Series/Taco Bell infomercial.

Not terrible. Up to 11.1 percent of U.S. households from 10.5 for Game 1. The key, as always, is going to be getting a long series that engages viewers. It's up to you, Rockies.

The rating in New York was 11.9. Baseball is one of the very few major sports events that rates better here than it does nationally.

Darn it. Someone just pointed out a poorly worded sentence in my column in which I write that there is no chance the 2007 World Series will "surpass'' last year's record low rating of 10.1.

I meant surpass as in break the record by going even lower, but obviously that can be read as a claim there is no chance the rating will be higher than 10.1.

I'm sorry for the confusion and lousy writing. Maybe if I didn't blog so much these things wouldn't happen.

(Update: I just fixed the wording on the Web version of the column.)

ALCS Game 5 continued the trend in which the ratings have improved for every contest during the series, quite impressive for a blowout that ended very late, as usual.

The game attracted an average of 8.5 percent of households on Fox, up from 4.8 to 5.6 to 6.6 to 8.2.

The rating of 9.9 in New York was second-best after St. Louis, if you don't count markets in Ohio and New England, plus Denver (home of the NL champs) plus Fort Myers (the Red Sox' spring training home).

If there is a Game 7 the numbers should get pretty darn good. If the Red Sox survive, even the World Series has a fighting chance.

As disastrous as the ratings for the NLCS were, the ALCS ratings have been headed in the opposite direction.

The percentage of households watching has risen every game, from 4.8 to 5.6 to 6.6 to 8.2 for Game 4, the best in 10 years for an LCS game that did not involve the Yankees playing the Red Sox.

Among markets outside Ohio and New England, New York (10.4) trailed only Denver (11.2) and St. Louis (11.1).

The NLCS finished with an average rating of 2.8. That's really, really bad.

Don't take it personally, Rockies. You're just not the Cubs.

It took some digging, but I turned up my story today on NLCS ratings on our Web site and now am happy to share it with WatchDog Nation. (It's the second item; scroll down.)

The numbers are amazingly grim. Apparently the Rockies have not quite captured the imagination of America, or at least that portion of America that goes to bed before 1 a.m. on a work/school night.

The national rating for Sunday's Pats-Cowboys game was more than seven times bigger than that for Game 4 of the NLCS. Wow.

CBS said the overnight rating for the Patriots-Cowboys game Sunday was its highest for a regular-season game since it returned to the NFL in 1998.

It was watched in an average of 18.5 percent of homes in the 56 largest TV markets, and attracted 35 percent of homes with TVs in use.

Ratings from the NLCS and ALCS have not yet been released. Turner plans to release the final numbers once the NLCS is over.

Note to readers: I had a cool, big picture of a flying dog here, but for some reason it was messing up the type on Internet Explorer, but not on Mozilla. So I took it down. Sorry.

Anyway, Sept. 18 I stopped by Bryant Park to check out an exhibition of something called "DockDogs,'' in which dogs that know how to jump very high and/or very far compete in events that measure their ability to do both of the above.

How do they avoid getting injured? They land in four feet of water.

It's as strange and compelling as it sounds, and it can be seen in a series on the Outdoor Channel that began last week and features a new episode every Thursday at 9 p.m.

The channel is popular and widely distributed in some parts of the country, but less so around here, because its focus is all that icky hunting and fishing stuff.

Cablevision customers, for example, can get it only via the company's Sports Pak, which costs $4.95 per month and also includes NBA TV and (soon) the NHL Channel.

NBC sent a news release today trumpeting its overnight ratings for Sunday night, in which it attracted 12.3 percent of households in major markets for the Bears-Packers game, compared to 10.8 percent for "Desperate Housewives'' on ABC.

The rating in Milwaukee was a mind-boggling 46.1, with 63 percent of the sets actually in use turned to the game.

Many New Yorkers were busy watching baseball at the time. We ranked dead last among the 56 measured markets with 5.7 percent watching the football game. Hartford was 55th at 5.8 and Boston was 54th at 6.0.

There is nothing like an epic collapse by a local squad to drive people to TV, radio, the Internet and newspapers.

Take Mike Francesa's Sunday night "Mike'd Up'' show on Ch. 4.

Presumably boosted by Mets fans looking for Mike's first take on their elimination, the show recorded the highest rating in its five-year history for the important men ages 25-54 demographic, with 4.7 percent of the audience.

Its 3.2 for men 18-49 was its second-best figure ever, as was the 2.8 for all adults 25-54.

(Obviously it also helped, as reader "Tom'' pointed out, that the Giants-Eagles game provided a lead-in for the show.)

Imagine what a sweep of the Yankees by the Indians would do for this Sunday night's numbers!