Weekend TV ratings: Football cruises vs. MLB playoffs

With the New York Yankees-Baltimore Orioles baseball playoff game Sunday rain-delayed for about two hours, the game's broadcast on TBS went head-to-head against the San Diego Chargers-New Orleans Saints NFL game on NBC.

And the NFL cruised.

NBC's game, in which New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees broke a tie with Johnny Unitas to set a record for consecutive games with a touchdown pass, drew an 11.7 overnight rating. (That translates to 11.7% of households in the 56 urban markets measured for overnights.) The Yankees-Orioles game drew a 3.3 overnight

And that Yanks-O's MLB game outdrew the Saints-Chargers in just three of the 56 TV markets -- New York, Baltimore and Hartford, Conn.

Still, MLB did nick NBC's Sunday prime-time game. That 11.7 overnight is down 16% from last year's comparable coverage of a Green Bay Packers-Atlanta Falcons game, which didn't face competition from MLB action.

With the Yanks-O's rain delay, Turner Sports moved Sunday's late Cincinnati Reds-San Francisco Giants game to TNT, creating overlapping MLB action. Predictably, that produced a weak rating: The Reds-Giants game drew a 0.9% overnight.

But excluding that overnight, TBS isn't doing badly so far. Games in its first three days of MLB playoff coverage averaged 2.9 overnights -- up 16% from last year.

The weekend's highest-rated game was the mediagenic matchup of Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning vs. New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, which got marquee positioning as the main late game in CBS' Sunday NFL doubleheader. It drew a 15.7 overnight, up 1% from comparable coverage last year which featured the New York Jets-Patriots game.

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