“They appeal to a very, very affluent group of people”.

They?……The show?….hosts?….athletes?….

The show has stayed on the air because it is a well produced fantastically hosted, sports half hour and it pulls a lot of well informed sports fans a chance at “Newspaper” skills on tv. Discussing the daily events in a manner that was not done on tv beforehand.

Any tv show that has a spin off and changed the sports was reported/criticized. There are people, such as say…..Sean Salisbury who indirectly owe their jobs to these two guys.

The show is great. I catch it on the tivo…….Korn needs to come back on Fridays……He didn't even shave for Thrus show.

They hit me right on the button… 23 years ago. Guess I was ahead of my time.

Oh yah… did you hear this one?

What’s the eighth planet from the Sun?
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Neptune.

Oooooh, numbers, cooooool! Are these online somewhere?

I could not agree more about the guest hosts on PTI (that personality thing again). If it ail Korn-bon, I’ll fast forward to see the topics, but I cannot take much of Bob Ryan (Really overexposed in New England) or Lebatard who, well, is Lebatard – Is he still defending Rickey Williams?

I also don’t particularly like them in some windy, empty stadium before MNF.

Around the Horn has averaged 746,000 viewers

PTI 1.0 million

6pm Sportscenter 829,000

Average age for PTI is 36 and average household income for PTI viewers is $63,000. That average income is quite high for any show and particularly for one with a relatively young audience.

I’m sure they have no trouble whatsoever finding sponsors for PTI! Any network will take as many young, male, and affluent viewers as they can get….

Ratings aside, I used to love PTI but I don’t watch too often anymore. Can’t take the frequent fill-in hosts.

Around The Horn is the worst sports-related show on television bar none.

By scripted, I mean more what you say in your comment and not an actual line-by-line script.

I think that in an opinion show, however, I want actual opinions and not those created “for the sake of argument”.

Also, you touch on the biggest problem of ESPN during the day. PTI was created before ATH. However, since ATH is on earlier, the topics of the day are discussed over and over before PTI comes on. The scheduling is based on general work schedules of course and I understand that. If someone gets out of work at 5, they’ll be home for PTI, if 4:30, then ATH.

It isn’t only ATH since “Rome is Burning” and “First and 10″ preceed that as well. Let’s face it, the P in ESPN has become “personalities”.

My schedule often has me at home during weekdays so this is when I watch these shows. Between 5-7 my viewing schedule is “It Takes a Thief” and “Mad Money” on CNBC. Then I’m back to my taped PTI later in the evening, or later in the week.

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1026331/index.htm

It was a 0.43 in 2002, if you don’t want to look.

I also watch all the PTI I can, recording it and skipping past the SportsCenter opening to get to the PTI end.

I cannot stomach ATH however. I’m hapily watching “It Takes a Thief” on Discovery at that time. ATH feels very scripted to me and it seems the writers are forced to take opposing positions often, something I don’t sense with messers Kornheiser and Wilbon.

And thanks for looking into the Wizards ratings. It’s hard to know exactly what ratings mean sometimes if you can’t compare them to the ratings of other shows on at the same time. And I think it’s a fascinating subject to compare which teams in the Washington area (or any area) draw more interest than others, and TV ratings are one way to do it. For some reason, the Washington Post chooses not to even examine the issue (they don’t even have a sports business/media reporter who writes for the print edition of the paper), even though they’ve justified lack of coverage of some sports by citing TV ratings (for instance, a couple years ago, the Caps beat reporter said he wasn’t covering the Stanley Cup finals that year because of the editors felt there was a lack of interest determined by TV ratings.)

Even without comparisons, though, I can tell that the Caps ratings last night were remarkable.

I got acces to the local Capitals Nielsen data because…I got access to some Capitals Nielsen data. I am seeing what I can do wrt the Wizards data. I doubt it’s fair to assume just because there’s no press release that the ratings are BAD. Not “record-breaking” is probably a fair assumption.

I wind up “freely” getting information for *many* cable shows that don’t make the top 40 because they are released by Nielsen in other venues or the networks themselves, but I’ve never seen ESPN issue a press release on actual PTI or ATH ratings. though did see this release that indicates both PTI and ATH reached new highs last year.

If you see cable ratings outside the Top 40 (the cutoff for which is about 3 million viewers) they were made public by a paying Nielsen customer.

No other reason to explain the split in PTI where they hold the last 3 minutes of the show until 6:25pm or so.