Maybe the ratings were good for that Argos-Eskimos game because people were curious to watch a game without announcers, and they'll fall for the encore. I don't think so, though.
The CBC says ratings held steady throughout the game, so folks must have been pleased. And for the most part they didn't complain, though the CFL did, arguing that the announcerless broadcast damaged the league's brand.
I think this proves my point. People tune in to any game in any sport because they want to see the game. An announcer 10 times greater than Vin Scully on his best day wouldn't convince more than a few people to watch a game they don't want to watch in the first place, and an announcer 100 times as annoying as Chris Berman wouldn't drive many folks away from a game they do want to see.
They'd just turn the sound down.
That's why the Dennis Miller experiment on "Monday Night Football" didn't work, but wasn't a disaster. It's why John Madden couldn't lift the Monday night ratings out of the doldrums. It's why, dare I say it, it just doesn't matter how bad Jeanne Zelasko is. We're still going to watch the World Series.
The CBC and the union will eventually work out their differences and the announcers will be back. In the meantime, if you're in position to catch this weekend's CFL game, check it out. You won't get many more chances to hear what you're not missing.
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Heartland attendance [PERMALINK]
A couple of clarifications about the column I wrote just before I went away for a while, about baseball attendance in the Midwest.
Reader Karl Appuhn correctly points out that I underestimated when I wrote, "There are only about 10,000 hardcore fans of any team, fewer in smaller markets, who'll come to the games no matter what."
What I should have written was that there are only enough hardcore fans of any team to create a nightly crowd of about 10,000, a little less in smaller markets. Obviously the same 10,000 people wouldn't go to every game, so the actual number of hardcore fans has to be something higher than 10,000.
More substantively, several people wrote to say that I'd ignored a major factor that holds down Chicago White Sox attendance: April and May weather.
It's true, I should have mentioned that. Cold weather limits South Side crowds for the first two months every year, and average attendance annually jumps in June.
In 2002, with the Sox in second place but losing ground, attendance increased 20.4 percent from May to June. In 2003, with the Sox in third but rallying from a bad start, the jump was 68.1 percent. Last year, with the Sox in first place -- they tanked in July -- the jump from May to June was 55.9 percent. This year, with the Sox leading the league, the jump was back down to only 24.5 percent.
That's because attendance was already rising in May. The Sox averaged 23,839 fans a game in May, 13.9 percent more than in May 2004, when they were also in first place but without having had such a dominant start, and 45.4 percent more than in May 2003, when they were going badly. When attendance began to pick up in mid-May this year, game-time temperatures were still in the low 50s.
Weather is a factor in April and May. But winning is always a factor. If the Sox don't collapse this year, they'll draw better next April and May than they did this spring, no matter how cold it is. Clip and save to hold me to that prediction.
Previous column: A losing division winner
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About the writer
King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon. Visit his column archive.
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