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 News & Notes

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Monday night's triple overtime in the Stanley Cup Final not only gave life to the Pittsburgh Penguins, but provided a boost to NBC's ratings as well.

Monday night's game drew a rating of 4.3, the best overnight rating for a game 5 since 2002. That  was a 79 percent increase over the 2.4 rating for Game 5 of last season's Final between the Anaheim Ducks and Ottawa Senators.

The game enjoyed its highest rating of the night between 11:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time, when it drew a 5.8 rating and ten share. The game drew a 35.4 rating in Pittsburgh and a 29.6 rating in Detroit.

In Dallas/Fort Worth the game averaged a 2.8 rating and a 5 share in the overnight ratings. It was the most watched program in the market from 11 p.m. to 11:45 p.m. local time. About 95,000 homes in the Dallas market were tuned in to watch the final part of the game, which concluded with Pittsburgh's Petr Sykora scoring at 9:57 of the third overtime.

Here are the top ten markets for game 5.

NBC also announced that Saturday night's Game 4 earned a 2.3 national rating and 5 share, which was up 21 percent over last year's Game 4 between Anaheim and Ottawa, which drew a 1.9 rating and 3 share. NBC ranked No. 1 in primetime on Saturday in adults 18-49, adults 18-34 and all key adult-male demographics.

Ducks to affiliate with Iowa

The Anaheim Ducks announced Tuesday that their new AHL affiliate would be in Iowa, where the Dallas Stars have been located the past three seasons.

The Stars and Iowa ended their affiliation at the end of this season. The Stars will be moving their affiliation to the Austin area and that is expected to happen for the 2009-10 season if all goes well.

The Stars are looking for AHL teams to place their prospects for next season and Iowa could still be an option for some of them. Anaheim GM Brian Burke said the Ducks are working with the Stars to possibly have some Dallas players still in Iowa.

"We’ve asked them to have some continuity and carryover; are there some players we could acquire through trades or they could place here so the fans don’t see 20 new faces on opening night?" Burke told the Des Moines Register.