I was schocked to read that TV audiences for the first two World Series games were 12.2 million and 12.9 million viewers. That means TV non-sense like The Walking Dead, NCIS:New Orleans and the vapid Big Bang Theory have larger audiences. The significance of this decline is shown by historical numbers, like 1978’s 44 million viewers and 34.5 million for the last time the Royals appeared in 1985. I offer this last piece of information for those who will claim that having a small market team causes the meager ratings.
I think we should look at the adoption of interleague play every day as a cause. At one time, I was told by an NFL executive that he envied the clear distinction between the leagues that baseball enjoyed. This clear distinction formed strong league affliliations among fans who tuned in to see their league beat the other league. Now, with interleague play everyday, the World Series has become just another interleague play series and there is no drama, other than having two great teams play each other.
Of course, this is a series between two wild-card teams that didn’t even win their own divisions!  Fans of division winners may not be tuning in out of spite, knowing their Cardinas, Orioles, Tigers, Angels, Dodgers and Nationals were the superior teams. I can’t argue with this as I hought the best teams were the Nationals and Orioles. That would have produced a very well viewed World Series with true champions representing their leagues.
By the way, I am rooting for the Royals because I am an American League fan as well as an AL Central fan.
I’ll be watching tonight just after my wife and I finish playing in our tennis league. We expect to win there, by the way.  I will never watch any of the aforementioned TV series for any reason.
Update: Sima and I won our match 6-7 (11-13 tiebreaker), 5-0 in a time limited set. The match was settled by a 7-4 tie breaker win. The match took over two hours and I am feeling the effects today.