The results have been predictable: a 57-54 record through Monday and fourth place in the American League East.
With far less excitement, fewer fans have been watching Yankees games on the YES Network — until Monday night.
A boost, however ephemeral, was provided when Alex Rodriguez played his first game of the season just hours after being suspended by Major League Baseball for 211 days, pending an appeal, for using performance-enhancing drugs.
The game against the Chicago White Sox, an otherwise unimportant matchup for the standings, generated the highest Yankees rating on YES this season, eclipsing a Mets-Yankees game in May. The Rodriguez-fueled average rating of a 4.34 (or 393,000 viewers) was a 71 percent improvement over the season’s average of a 2.53, which, itself, is down 36 percent over last year at this time.
Curiosity about Rodriguez — and what he was capable of doing after hip surgery, a quadriceps injury and being walloped with a suspension that could sideline him without pay until the 2015 season — brought an unusually high number of viewers to the game before the first pitch at 8 p.m. Eastern at U.S. Cellular Field. For the first 15 minutes, the game generated a 6.2 rating.
The 8.2 peak rating (or 756,000 viewers) for the game occurred from 8:30 to 8:45, when Rodriguez came to bat for the first time and singled. By then, the Yankees were behind, 3-0; by the end of the third inning, they were trailing, 7-0. The rating was already in descent. Clearly, interest in what Rodriguez would do in his next three at-bats (a flyout, a line-out and a strikeout) was evaporating. When the game ended between 10:45 and 11 p.m., the rating stood at a 2.5, the season’s average.
Before the game, YES carried a “Yankeeography” episode about Gene Michael from 6 to 7 p.m., rather than cut live to Rodriguez’s 13-minute news conference, which began at 6:15 p.m. A spokesman for YES said that in its 7-to-8-p.m. pregame program it showed nearly all of Rodriguez’s remarks and parts of Manager Joe Girardi’s news conference, along with player reaction and analysis.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/07/sports/baseball/rodriguezs-return-boosts-ratings-on-yes.html?partner=rss&emc=rss