Today Buffalo, Tomorrow The World

Well, forget the idea that the star-studded NBA Finals on ABC affiliate Channel 7 will outdraw the Stanley Cup finals on the NBC affiliate locally.

The Carolina-Edmonton series has just about doubled the ratings for the Dallas-Miami NBA matchup here.

Channel 2's ratings are as much as four times the meager national ratings for the NHL. Channel 7 gets about half of the improving ratings that ABC has had for the NBA Finals.

It was thought that the celebrity-filled NBA Finals matchup might help it compete with the Stanley Cup final. Not a chance. Buffalo is the No. 2 market in the country for the hockey finals, behind only Raleigh-Durham. NBC's coverage of three games averaged more than a 9 rating here. Edmonton's Game Five overtime victory that extended the series to tonight's sixth game averaged an 11.3 until 11 p.m. and hit a 12.7 in overtime.

Much has been made of the meager television audiences in these playoffs, especially in the United States. But thanks in large part to a compelling final series, NBC's national ratings for the last three games are now on a par with those of the 2004 Stanley Cup finals, ESPN.com has learned.
More impressive, Game 5 managed a 2.5 rating and peaked at 4.0 in the late stages of the Oilers' 4-3 overtime win.

The rationale, according to television types, is that the product is a strong enough lure fans in and keep them interested, one of the key elements of improving the weak-kneed American television audience as a whole. Total viewers for Game 5 were 3.85 million, up 4 percent from Game 5 of the 2004 Stanley Cup finals between Calgary and Tampa Bay.

The younger male audience the NHL (and its advertisers) craves, between the ages of 18 and 24, was up 60 percent for the fifth game over Game 5 in 2004. There were also 25 percent more women (ages 18-24) watching Game 5.

Although NBC's overall playoff numbers are down significantly over ABC's numbers for the 2004 playoffs (minus 19 percent), the three NBC games thus far in the finals have a 2.0 share, which matches ABC's first three games in 2004. NBC is averaging more than 3 million viewers in this final series, slightly ahead of the actual number of viewers two springs ago.