As promised here are Nielsen Women's US Open surveys, weeks 3, 4 and the championship. I don't have week two - had it but failed to save it and lost it. Will try to research that week again but I believe the rating was a .5. First week on Sept. did a .7.

First number is percent of homes with TV's on at that time watching the show, the second number is the total number of homes (out of 112.8 million total).

Oct. 14 - WOMEN'S BOWLING U.S. OPEN 0.6 562,684

Oct. 7 - WOMEN'S BOWLING U.S. OPEN 0.5 511,548

Sept. 30 - WOMEN'S BOWLING U.S. OPEN 0.5 438,510

As a comparison, Dancing with the Stars on Oct. 8 was the #1 ranked show for the week with a 12.8 rating.

Summary, the viewership is a good start. I'll be comparing it to the USBC Masters survey on October 28th.

Here's the Sept 23 NSI

Simon, don't know if they did follow up on it but would like to hear from USBC on how much success they had with persuading local associations to promote the shows to their membership and bowling centers to air them live and maybe tape and air them where they have the ability to do that on their scoring monitors.  If it was a rousing success the actual number of viewers may have been higher than reflected by Nielsen.

I think being able to count on local support is at least as important as ratings in the sale of future corporate support for a tour or series like the one aired and the upcoming four weeks on the PBA tour.

Don Gates

Don perhaps you are forgetting that the series aired on Sundays around the early afternoon. That is the birthday party witching hour and you must realize that birthday party patrons do not want to watch bowling on the monitors while they are grinding cake into the approaches.

Would give us the names of centers who specifically turned off the US Women's Open telecasts because of birthday parties??

Don,

I can tell you none of the associations around the St. Louis metro promoted it.

Our local center, Greenway Bowl in Odenton, Md. owned by Wally Hall (the same one who writes in BJI and tells everyone how they should run their centers and promote bowling), had the TVs in the center removed so they couldn't possibly show bowling.

whiteoak wrote:

Our local center, Greenway Bowl in Odenton, Md. owned by Wally Hall (the same one who writes in BJI and tells everyone how they should run their centers and promote bowling), had the TVs in the center removed so they couldn't possibly show bowling.

WOW. A first-person letter to the editor of the BJI is in order for this indiscretion.

SimonSez wrote:

Would give us the names of centers who specifically turned off the US Women's Open telecasts because of birthday parties??

I never said that any of the centers turned off the telecast because of birthday parties. I only suggested that since the telecast aired during a time slot most centers reserve for birthday parties, that might be the reason it was not viewed on each and every monitor in each and every center coast to coast. Of course the reason could just have easily have been that there was a football game on the monitor instead.

skullpants wrote:

SimonSez wrote: Would give us the names of centers who specifically turned off the US Women's Open telecasts because of birthday parties?? I never said that any of the centers turned off the telecast because of birthday parties. I only suggested that since the telecast aired during a time slot most centers reserve for birthday parties, that might be the reason it was not viewed on each and every monitor in each and every center coast to coast. Of course the reason could just have easily have been that there was a football game on the monitor instead.

Gee, glad you straightened that up.

Does anyone know what the MLS championship got for a rating?

 Sunday the 18th on a real network (ABC) not hiden on ESPN2. Starting only 1 hour before the NFL.

Did Soccer with a couple of big advantages get a better rateing?

The MLS championship game received a 0.8 rating on Nov. 18.

Interesting the Women Bowling (Sport of the past) head to head with the NFL on a second tier sports cable channel (ESPN2) drew an audience close to the Sport of Americas future (Soccer) on a first line station ABC. Starting before the NFL.I would say that was an outstanding result for bowling.  I bet the difference in house hold viewer ship was less than the difference in the number of house holds that had access. This is something the USBC, PBA and Women bowlers can work with. If they push the networks and show sponsors the results. Go after Sears, Lowes or Home Depot to sponsor the rake. Think of the TV time the Rake gets. A heck of a lot more than a 30 sec spot every 15 minutes and far less likely to be tivo'd past.

Sell Sponsors for the gutters.  In short sell the sport to the marketing Giants.

Not to mention Bowling draws a bigger audience than the MLS. So it would get more exposure than the Amigo Energy logo on the Dynamo Jersey.