According to Nielsen, nobody watched the Houston Astros play the Cleveland Indians on Sunday for an as-low-as-possible rating of 0.0.
Houston Astros’ TV ratings go literally as low as they can possibly go
0.0 is the lowest possible number, unless Nielsen manages to capture negative TV’s watching the Astros. (This was really just another reason for us to use Buttslide.gif.)
The Nielsen ratings have meters on 581 televisions in the Houston area. The Houston Chronicle reports that while 23 percent of those TV’s watched the Texans, not a single one tuned into the Astros, with a first pitch at roughly the same time as kickoff. We already knew there were very few people watching the Astros, but this is a new low in a season filled with them
Of course, Nielsen’s ratings aren’t perfect. Extrapolating 581 televisions to an entire metro area does not mean nobody watched the game. Several sports bars confirmed they were showing the game on one of the TV’s not featuring the Texans, and Chronicle reporter David Barron says he had the game on his deskside TV “just to ensure that it was, in fact, broadcast.” And indeed, our Crawfish Boxes did appear to watch judging from their recap of the team’s ninth straight loss to drop them to 51-105.
Barron notes that other shows that received higher-than-zero Nielsen figures in the same timeslot were decades-old Cosby Show and 21 Jump Street reruns and Formula One racing from Singapore.
