2007 Stanley Cup Finals - Television Ratings

Television Ratings

The 2007 Stanley Cup Final was also notable for its exceptionally poor television ratings in the United States.

Games one and two were carried by cable channel Versus, then a new and little known player on the sports television scene.
Game one produced a 0.5 national rating or 523,000 households. It was the 58th best rated program of that day. Game two produced a 0.4 national rating or 446,000 households, lower than the 2006 WNBA All-Star Game on ESPN which drew 447,000 households. It was the 74th best rated program of that day.

The move to NBC didn't do much to compensate for the series' limited drawing power. A perennial last among the Big Four American television networks, NBC was at the time going through an intense period of ratings turmoil, setting lowest rated week records in several viewing categories over the course of Spring 2007.

Game three's coverage on NBC garnered a mere 1.1 rating (approximately 1,205,600 households), making it the lowest rated prime-time broadcast in the network's history. For comparison, Game 6 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, broadcast opposite Game 3 on cable channel TNT, achieved a 5.3 rating, approximately 5,808,800 households.
Game four achieved a 1.9 rating (approximately 2,082,400 households), down 5% from game four the previous year. Game 5 received slightly less, 1.8 (approximately 1,972,800 households). As a whole, NBC's ratings for the championship series were down 20 percent from the previous season, making it the least watched final in the United States.

At the time, Versus was only available to 50% of cable-equipped homes in the Los Angeles area, which hurt the buzz around the Ducks' playoff run in a traditionally crowded sports and entertainment market. Versus was the 5th most watched cable network in the Los Angeles market for Game 1, good only for a 1.7 local rating.

As the series moved to NBC, local numbers improved. The Cup-clinching game five drew a 6.0 and a 12 share for an average audience of 496,000 viewers in the Los Angeles market, twice larger than CBS' presentation of a high profile regular season game between baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres (3.0/5, 218,000 viewers). This symbolic, if short-lived, victory against one of the region's flagship teams allowed the Ducks to close the series on a relatively high note, with the Los Angeles Times' Larry Stewart calling their final ratings performance "pretty good".

On the CBC, Hockey Night in Canada pulled in 2,608,000, 2,378,000, and 2,553,000 viewers for games one, two, and three respectively, slightly higher than their numbers for equivalent games the previous year.

This was the last final that Bob Cole (play-by-player announcer) and Harry Neale (colour commentator) worked together. The following year, Cole worked with Greg Millen.