Because of the shorten NBA season caused by the lockout, this is the first time the telecast of the NBA All-Star game went head-to-head with the 84th Academy Awards. I thought the basketball game would get crushed, even with Linsanity in attendance - technically, he was only in the Rising Stars Challenge which took place on Friday.
Who’s bright idea was it to go head-to-head with one of the biggest tv events of the year? Couldn’t the NBA have done it the week before or after the Oscars? Maybe TNT, which televised the game, thought it’s good counter-programming.
Well, anyway. The numbers are out. The Oscars picked up 39 million viewers, a slight improvement over last year. The NBA All-Star game scored $5.9 million. Ok, you might look at these numbers and think that the NBA got slaughtered by Hollywood. True, but this All-Star game is actually the second-highest since 2005.
I guess I was wrong. I thought this game would be one of the lower rated. I watched a couple minutes of the All-Star game and switched over to the Oscars. I kinda had to because I was live-blogging the show for Movies With Butter.
If I wasn’t live-blogging the Oscars, I would have been channel flipping.
