The Yankees may not want him, but fans sure do want to watch him.
Alex Rodriguez’s season debut on Monday night on YES Network produced the cable channel’s highest ratings of the season. The 8-1 rout by the White Sox over the Yankees averaged a 4.34 rating, far above the 2.5 they’ve averaged this season – a number that is down 39-percent from last season’s 4.1.
Viewership reached its peak between 8:30-8:45 with an 8.22 average, when Rodriguez’s first at-bat of the season (a bloop single to left) took place. It capped off a day that saw YES decide not to show Rodriguez’s pregame press conference live at 6:15 p.m. even though many competitors, including SNY, did just that. YES stuck with their original programming of Gene Michael’s “Yankeeography.”
YES did show a replay of it as part of their pregame show an hour later.
“[Showing the news conference at 7 p.m.] enabled us to package everything into a smooth-running cohesive show that incorporated all of the latest developing news of the afternoon,” YES spokesman Eric Handler said in an email. “Also, by going at 7 pm, we had a potentially bigger audience for our show than we’d have during the 6:00 hour.”