Many more NYC sports fans watch Yanks than Giants

[October 27, 2009]  NEW YORK (AP) -- Sports fans in New York overwhelmingly chose to watch a decisive baseball playoff game over a regular-season football matchup Sunday night.

The Yankees' chance to clinch a World Series berth went up against the Giants' meeting with the Arizona Cardinals. Fox said Monday that its coverage of Game 6 of the AL championship series was watched by 26.4 percent of the market's homes with televisions and 40 percent of households with TVs in use at the time. The numbers for NBC's "Sunday Night Football" were 9.3 and 14.

Phillies fans were apparently scouting their next opponent: The figures were 20.6 and 31 in the Philadelphia market.

"Our ratings last night were spectacular," commissioner Bud Selig said Monday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "To get a 26.4 in New York while the Giants got a 9.3 on 'Sunday Night Football' is stunning."

Nationally, the entire ALCS averaged a 6.5/12, up 35 percent from the 4.8/8 for the five-game Phillies-Dodgers NLCS on the network last year.

[Associated Press]

AP Sports Writer Larry Lage contributed to this report.

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