Packers smoke Brewers in head-to-head TV duel

Maybe if they'd made the NLCS?

Nah, probably not:

For the first time in 26 years, the Milwaukee Brewers were in the playoffs and faced an elimination game against the Philadelphia Phillies in a telecast carried on TBS, a channel available in about 80% of the TV households in Milwaukee.

At the same time, the Green Bay Packers were playing a home game against the Atlanta Falcons, a game that aired on WITI-TV (Channel 6), a Fox channel available in all TV households here.

The Packers couldn’t beat the Falcons but they did beat the Brewers in terms of a Milwaukee-area TV audience.

The Packers-Falcons game had a 29.6 rating, or 267,983 households. The Brewers-Phillies Game 4 had a 13.0 rating, or 117,695 households.

A total of 53% of the sets on at the time were tuned to the football game, compared with 23% for the baseball game.

So even adjusting for the smaller number of viewers who could see the Brewers game, the Packers drew much better numbers.

This doesn't surprise me. Football’s more fun to watch. It’s faster, and more varied, and offers far more opportunity to see somebody get wrecked.

On the other hand, I was watching the football game on TV, and had the Brewers on the computer. I could also have put it on the radio. I wonder how many others were doing something like that?