Tuesday, April 11
NEW YORK -- Vijay Singh's second win in the last six majors was a compelling story. David Duval and two-time U.S. Open champion Ernie Els forcing Singh to play well made for good golf. Still, television ratings for the Masters declined for the third consecutive year. The two-day national average for CBS' coverage was a 7.5 rating/18 share, down 7 percent from last year's 7.9/19, the network said Monday. The 5.9/15 for the third round, when Tiger Woods was shooting a 4-under-par 68 to creep closer to the leaders, represented an 18 percent jump from 1999's 5.0/15, and tied for the third-highest Masters on Saturday. "Obviously, whenever Tiger is in contention and in your coverage, the ratings normally show an up-tick," CBS Sports president Sean McManus said. "The last two years, Tiger was not a factor, and still the ratings were consistently strong. I'm particularly encouraged that each and every year, the ratings are consistent at the Masters." CBS kept its cameras focused on Woods throughout Sunday's final round, showing all but two of his shots after the broadcast began when he was at the seventh hole. Viewers didn't miss a single stroke by Woods from the 14th hole on, even though a bogey at 16 dropped him five shots behind Singh. Sunday's coverage garnered a 9.9/22 national rating, only 2 percent off last year. The first shot of the broadcast Sunday was live coverage of Duval's birdie putt at the sixth hole, tying him with Singh atop the leaderboard. Seconds later, Singh made a birdie of his own to retake the lead. CBS never showed what had happened earlier in the day. The Sunday rating was better than all Masters' final-round ratings from 1982-1997, with the exception of a 10.5 in 1990, when Nick Faldo beat Raymond Floyd in a playoff to win his second straight title at Augusta National. "The ratings grew each half-hour on Sunday, and in today's world of television that's a very reassuring set of numbers," McManus said. "It's also encouraging given the fact that Vijay actually had the tournament won after the 16th hole." The landscape of golf ratings changed dramatically in 1997, of course, when Woods won the green jacket by a record 12-shot margin. The Sunday national rating in 1997 was a 14.1 (42 percent better than this year) and the two-day number was 11.2 (49 percent better than this year) -- both the highest in CBS' 45 years of airing the Masters. In 1997, CBS showed 66 of Woods' 69 final-round shots. A rating point represents 1,080,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 100.8 million TV homes. The share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.
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