Ratings peak after the homer

The ESPN2 telecast of Tuesday night’s game in which Barry Bonds hit record-setting home run No. 756 got a national rating of 1.1 and attracted an average of 995,000 viewers. The rating peaked at 1.9 with 1.759 million viewers from 9-9:15 p.m. shortly after Bonds hit his fifth-inning homer, which indicates word spread fast.

In all, ESPN2 televised eight games involving the San Francisco Giants as Bonds pursued Hank Aaron’s record, and those telecasts averaged a 0.9 rating, an increase over the 0.7 that ESPN2 averaged for four comparable baseball telecasts last season at this juncture.

In Los Angeles, Tuesday night’s game got a 1.2 rating.

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Larry Stewart