NEW YORK (AP) -- Every fall when Fox puts its prime-time schedule essentially on hold for the baseball postseason, it hopes the reward is greater than the risk. So far this year, it hasn't worked out that way.

Game 1 of the World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers on Saturday had the lowest household rating ever for a World Series game, according to Nielsen Media Research. The game was seen by 12.8 million people, down from last year's opening game (15 million).

Ratings improved for the second game, which had 18.2 million viewers on Sunday. That was a million more than last year's Game 2, Nielsen said.

Postseason baseball games -- on both Fox and cable -- have averaged 9.5 million viewers this October, Nielsen said. That's down from 11 million last year and 14.6 million in 2004, the year the Boston Red Sox ended their World Series drought.

The one potential bright side for Fox: with the Tigers and Cards splitting the first two games, Fox is already guaranteed the Series will go longer than it has the last two years. That gives Fox the chance to recover if more fans catch on.

Baseball didn't give Fox the ratings crown for last week -- it came in second to CBS. And among the younger viewers that Fox seeks, the older-skewing baseball games pushed Fox to third behind ABC and CBS.

Meanwhile, an interesting battle is brewing between ABC's "Lost" and CBS' underrated "Criminal Minds." The ABC show has all the buzz, but last week captured 16.3 million viewers to 16.2 million for "Criminal Minds."

NBC's expensive gamble with creator Aaron Sorkin, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," continues to slump. It reached 7.7 million viewers last week, trounced by CBS' "CSI: Miami" (18.2 million) in the same time slot.

CBS averaged 12.6 million viewers for the week (8.0 rating, 13 share), Fox had 11.9 million (7.8, 13), ABC had 11.2 million (7.3, 12), NBC 8.9 million (5.7, 9), the CW 3.6 million (2.3, 4) and the i network 610,000 (0.4, 1).

Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision led with a 3 million average (1.8, 3), Telemundo had 830,000 (0.5, 1) and Telefutura 670,000 (0.4, 1).

The pecking order didn't change in the hot evening news ratings race: NBC's "Nightly News" finished first, averaging 8.7 million viewers (6.0, 12). ABC's "World News" had 8.4 million viewers (5.9, 12) and the "CBS Evening News" 7.6 million (5.2, 10).

A ratings point represents 1,114,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 111.4 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Source: www.checkfreshnews.com

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