DATE: Monday, October 20, 1997              TAG: 9710200137

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Bob Molinaro 

                                            LENGTH:   59 lines

TV VIEWING HAS REPLACED BASEBALL AS OUR PASTIME

It's becoming a new fall tradition.

As baseball winds up its long season with the World Series, it prepares for the inevitable letdown - the annual announcements of faltering TV ratings.

Some of the numbers are already in. They will confound anyone who considered the American League Championship Series between Cleveland and Baltimore to be riveting theater.

The six-installment Indians-Orioles mini-drama was the lowest-rated LCS in history.

What does this tell us? That when baseball wins, it still loses?

Perhaps the disappointing numbers can be attributed to the network that presented the ALCS. Fox remains a mystery to some viewers, especially those without cable or a deep appreciation of Bart Simpson.

Of course, even talking about the Nielsens gives them more credibility than they deserve. I do not believe in the reliability of TV ratings and never will.

Furthermore, anyone who believes TV ratings to be an accurate reflection of America's interests is just a tool of the TV establishment, a pawn waiting to be manipulated by Madison Avenue and Hollywood.

I mean, how many of us have ever met a Nielsen family? Or understand how the ratings system works?

Can anyone actually make sense of the Nielsen process? Or prove its validity? Sure, networks and their affiliates live and die by ratings. But consider who you're dealing with here - TV people.

This is the problem for baseball, though: Ratings may be bogus, but the negative perceptions they create are damaging. It does the game no good to reach its Fall Classic only to be undercut by stories about uninterested Nielsen families, whoever they are.

As if these ratings reports are not hurtful enough, an executive from the World Series' network comes out the other day and piles on.

``We're looking for four and out,'' Don Ohlmeyer, president of NBC West Coast, said before the start of the Series.

Ohlmeyer's concern is that a Game 5 would eclipse NBC's prime-time Thursday lineup of ``Friends,'' ``Seinfeld,'' et al. This would disrupt the viewing habits of TV Nation. We can't have that.

America's national pastime, we now know, is watching television. It's no longer baseball. Not even when the World Series is in session.

October baseball, though, deserves better press than these ratings stories give it. Unfortunately, the current World Series may not be worth defending.

I have never met a Nielsen family. I have also never met a Florida Marlins fan. They may be one and the same, as far as I know. Like the Nielsens, the Marlins leave me cold.

Why? Maybe it's their deep, rich, five-year tradition of baseball.

The Indians may yet turn into a sentimental favorite, but one big trouble with this World Series is that it gives off the general aura of a Poulan Weedeater Bowl.

Maybe this is a result of neither participant's proving over the course of the year that it was the best team in its league. Old-timers will recall that, before the age of ``Seinfeld'' and ``must-see TV,'' this was a basic requirement for admission to the World Series.

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