4:34 p.m. | Updated Americans, it seems, like talented people who can jump over beds of nails and ride motorcycles in cages more than they like the best sluggers and pitchers in baseball.
The Major League Baseball All Star game on Fox suffered a pounding Tuesday night from NBC’s mid-summer competition show, “America’s Got Talent,” and this year’s game is now the lowest-rated in history.
In the national ratings, the All Star Game drew just under 11 million viewers, down from 12.1 million last year, the previous low. The falloff was worse in the category of viewers between the ages of 18 and 49, the prime target for many television advertisers: the game fell 18 percent in that group, from a 3.8 rating to just a 3.1 this year
And the numbers for “America’s Got Talent” can surely be cited as a major reason for that shortfall. Compared with the same night last year, when “Talent” also faced off against the game, the NBC summer hit was up 21 percent both in total viewers, at 14 million up from 11.6 million, and in the 18-49 measure, with a 4 rating up from a 3.3 last year.
Once the high point of the summer for sports fans, the All Star game has deteriorated steadily, especially since the start of inter-league play. In the past, players from the two leagues only faced each other in the post season and in the All Star game. Now they play each other often and the interest in seeing the stars go head to head seems to have waned.
At the same time, “America’s Got Talent” –- which Tuesday featured one act that had a woman doing somersaults 20 feet in the air and landing on a thin board suspended over a bed of nails, and another with a family riding motorcycles in a cage -– continues to surge. The show has succeeded NBC’s other hit, “The Voice,” as the regular top-rated show every week in the summer.
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