The NBA Eastern Conference finals continue to draw strong ratings on national television – albeit considerably stronger in Cleveland than in Atlanta.
Sunday night’s third game of the Hawks-Cavaliers series on TNT posted a 32.0 Nielsen rating in the Cleveland TV market, more than triple the 10.1 rating the game drew in the Atlanta market. The rating is the percentage of TV households that watched the game on average in each market.
Nationally, Sunday’s game averaged a 4.7 household rating and 7.8 million viewers, making it the highest-rated and most-viewed program of the day on U.S. television. The audience peaked with 10.5 million viewers for the final 15 minutes of the telecast.
The first three games of the series have averaged a 4.3 national rating and 6.9 million viewers. Viewership is up 11 percent over TNT’s three comparable game telecasts in last year’s playoffs.
Locally, the ratings have been sharply higher in Cleveland than in Atlanta for each of the three games. For Game 1, 31.4 percent of TV households watched in Cleveland, compared to 15.4 percent in Atlanta. For Game 2, 29 percent watched in Cleveland and 10.9 percent in Atlanta.
Sunday’s 32.0 rating in Cleveland was the highest on record for a TNT telecast of a Cavaliers game in that market.
Games 1 and 2 of the series overlapped with Braves telecasts in the Atlanta market. The Hawks overwhelmingly won that comparison, drawing about seven times more local households than the Braves games.
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