LOS ANGELES -- By the end of the World Series, CBS could be taking the Tomahawk Chop to its baseball contract.
But didn't CBS executives read the fine print in the network's $1.06 billion contract? Somewhere it must say there is no guarantee a team from a large market will reach the postseason and create a built-in audience.
Atlanta outlasted the Dodgers, meaning only 1.4 million home-team television households compared with 5 million in Los Angeles. It's worse in the National League West, where Pittburgh and its 1.2 million households beat the Mets and Cubs from bigger metropolitan areas.
The American League offers no relief with Minnesota in a market of 1. 3 million homes and Toronto obviously not even part of the U.S. audience.
History and Nielsen ratings show that viewership diminishes when teams from smaller markets participate. The highest-rated World Series in the last decade came 10 years ago when the Yankees and Dodgers drew 30 percent of the nation's TV homes.
CBS, smiling on the outside on the eve of the postseason, must be crying within.
'Glamour is in the playing, not where it's played,' said Tim McCarver, the network's No. 1 baseball analyst. 'From a production standpoint, we want the best series possible. You'd have to say after 162 games, you're going to have the best teams possible and the best chance for a good series.
'Obviously you care about the ratings, but the Atlanta Braves have an obvious following and I don't think it'll mean one bit in the ratings (that the Braves advanced and the Dodgers went home).'
Jack Buck, McCarver's partner on the NL playoff telecasts beginning Wednesday, agrees.
'I think Atlanta's baseball scene has brought respect in recent years,' Buck said. 'The selling out (of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium), the Tomahawk Chop, it's a refreshing scene. I don't think we'll be hurt one iota.'
The American League announcers stick with the party line.
'Going from worst (last place last year) to first lends a certain kind of drama to it,' Dick Stockton said of the Braves and Twins, two of only three teams in major league history to make the turnaround.
Jim Kaat, the American League analyst beginning Tuesday, dismisses the gloom surrounding CBS baseball, which lost a reported $275 million last year.
'I liken it to when I was a player,' he said. 'I like being on a team. You really have no control over how many people are watching. You can't worry about what your front office is doing or has done.'
The CBS 'front office' has done away with week-night pregame shows, choosing to show its regular entertainment lineup at 8 p.m. EDT. Also gone because of the dollar shortage in the television industry is one camera per playoff and World Series game.
'The production division in its entirety has been impacted by a recession,' said NL producer Ric LaCivita. 'You have to do a telecast with less. It's true with the NFL and everything ABC and ESPN is doing these days.
'CBS afforded us everything we wanted to do creatively. We'll have 11 cameras in the Championship Series and 14 for the World Series. We're not planning on people noticing, that's for sure.'
Buck has already noticed.
'The announcers have been told to hold it down to two meals a day,' he said.
