FanDuel Sports Network Cardinals broadcasters Chip Caray, left, and Mark Sweeney are set to call Friday’s game, which will be simulcast on Matrix Midwest (Channel 32).

FanDuel Sports Network

Round 1 of the Cardinals’ dabble with a return to over-the-air television was a success, leading to the team’s highest-rated game to date in a still extremely early season. Round 2, set for Friday night, faces a much bigger challenge.

Like the initial contest in the team’s 10-game over-the air TV experiment this year, Friday’s telecast will be a simulcast on FanDuel Sports Network — the team’s pay-for-programming TV base — but on only one over-the-air station. That’s Matrix Midwest (Channel 32), an upstart station still unfamiliar to many people in the area.

That’s a departure from the first contest in the package, which aired on long-established KMOV (Channel 4) in addition to Matrix and FanDuel, with KMOV drawing the vast majority of the overall audience according to viewership-tracking firm Nielsen.

But KMOV, the market’s CBS affiliate, has a limited number of network programming preemptions, whereas Matrix does not. So it will be interesting for the team and Gray Media, owner of KMOV and Matrix, to see how Matrix does in the ratings as the standalone over-the-air option Friday when it airs the Cards’ home game against Milwaukee that’s set to start at 7:15 p.m.

Matrix has only existed since August, with an ever-increasing amount of sports programming. While it is available throughout the market via antennas, Spectrum (Charter) is the only major pay-programming distributor to carry it — on Channel 6 — and Nielsen says just 0.2% of households in the market watched the opening game on that channel while KMOV was at 6.3%. FanDuel checked in at 2.5%.

JD Sosnoff is general manager of KMOV and Matrix, and when asked if the biggest challenge facing Matrix is educating viewers on what the station is and how to get it, he quickly said “without a doubt.”

“I expect those (viewership) numbers to continue to grow as Matrix continues to grow and awareness for people to understand where it is and how to get it increases. … Matrix Midwest has accelerated much more quickly than I could’ve hoped.”

The Blues also experimented this season with a return to free TV for the first time in more than a decade and a half by placing three games on Matrix — two of which also aired on KMOV — and those Matrix viewership figures from Nielsen also were minuscule. They include just 1% of the market watching the contest that Matrix had exclusively. (Unlike the Cardinals, the Blues did not simulcast their over-the-air games on FanDuel). Sosnoff says the Matrix figures were higher when reported by Comscore, a different ratings service, but Nielsen remains the industry standard.

The big picture

The opener of the KMOV-Matrix Cardinals package was two weeks ago, and the viewership figure was robust — but not at a blockbuster level, as it did not surpass the lowest-rated of the 18 Kansas City Chiefs NFL games televised last season in St. Louis.

According to Nielsen, 9% of the market tuned in on April 11 to watch the Cardinals across the Gray channels plus FanDuel. That figure surpassed the previous season high of 8.6%, for the home opener only on FanDuel.

Anuk Karunaratne, the Cardinals’ senior vice president of business operations, was pleased with the results.

“It’s a massive increase in (audience) reach,” he said of adding broadcast TV to the mix. “That’s exactly what we were hoping for, and it shows there are people out there that will watch the games if we give them more options like that.”

In addition to utilizing free TV in the club’s local broadcast package after a 14-year absence, the team also is allowing fans to purchase the telecasts directly for the first time this season (a subscription to a service that carried the games had been required previously). Karunaratne said those choices, plus the longstanding cable option, combine for “a significant improvement on our reach from where we’ve been in the past.”

The vast majority of those tuning in on April 11 to the telecast of the Cards-Phillies game, 72%, watched on the Gray channels, led by that previously mentioned rating of 6.3% on KMOV. In contrast, there has been one other Cardinals game this season shown locally over the air, a contest against the Mets last Saturday night in New York that was part of Fox’s national schedule and drew a 5.7 household rating on local affiliate KTVI (Channel 2).

FanDuel was averaging a 4.2 household rating at its latest update, through Sunday (20 telecasts), and benefits from having its productions simulcast over the air because it can promote its streaming and cable products to a new audience.

Meanwhile, Sosnoff — the KMOV and Matrix GM — said he is particularly happy with the ratings results given that viewers are not used to watching the Cardinals on those stations.

“Yet the numbers were terrific,” he said.

The Cards and Blues are testing the over-the-air TV marketplace in wake of the major erosion of the regional sports network and cable TV business models in recent years.

“There’s a desire for people to have ease of access to watch their favorite sports games,” Sosnoff said. “A free broadcast model is effective in delivering big audiences.”

The migration of sports from TV stations to streaming platforms has led to fans having to pay for multiple services if they want to see the full package, which would be costly.

“There are only so many streaming services that fans are willing to pay for today,” Sosnoff said. “In a tough and economic environment people have to make choices about what they’re going to have on in their house. When they’re offered a free opportunity, they come in mass and show that there’s a big fan base here. I would suggest you that if there was consistency in that pattern, I would hope that those numbers would only grow.”

Karunaratne, the Cardinals executive, was pleased with the early results.

“It seemed like it worked out really well, and some of the feedback we’ve gotten has been really positive,” he said. “I think it’s doing what we intended and hoped for, which ultimately is to create another option for people to watch our games across our entire market.”

He emphasized that wide availability is important.

“We need to provide options for people,” Karunaratne said. “There’s not a silver bullet that is the only way that people are going to watch, and that’s likely going to be the case for the next several years. I think that there’s definitely a place for this (over-the-air TV) in the mix of how we get our broadcasts out. Streaming is going to be a part of that. Cable is going to be a part of that. Even though we hear about people cutting the cord, which is true, there’s still a large number of people that still subscribe to and will watch on cable.”

The Gray games also are being shown over the air in 14 other markets in the Cards’ TV territory, and the company said the first of those drew strong viewership levels in Springfield and Cape Girardeau in Missouri; Evansville, Indiana; Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Davenport, Iowa.

That’s good news for the team, too.

“We’re getting a big lift in in the outer market as well so it’s an encouraging early sign of,” Karunaratne said.

The bottom line

A major factor affecting TV viewership, and home attendance, is the team’s performance on the field. In a season that began with low expectations, the Cardinals thus far are living up to that feeling as they enter their weekend series against Milwaukee at 10-15 and just half a game ahead of last-place Pittsburgh in the National League Central Division.

“There’s always a relationship that if the team is winning, attendance and ratings are higher than if they’re not,” Karunaratne said. “There are still people that tune in and there’s still people that come to the ballpark no matter what … and we’ve we have to give them a good product, a good experience and that’s what we’re focused on.”

He added that the team’s performance, good our bad, won’t change the approach of having more TV and streaming choices offered than before.

“It’s really like thinking of a different lens than we’ve had in the past,” Karunaratne said. “The encouraging thing is we’re now finally in a place where we have these different options for people, and we’re going to learn a lot this year about what works, what doesn’t work, how we can continue to improve it. I’m sure it’ll be an evolving thing as we move forward.”

The Cardinals are scheduled to have at least 10 games televised on KMOV (Channel 4) and/or Matrix Midwest (Channel 32) this season. The remaining contests that have been scheduled thus far, all on Fridays:

• April 25: 7:15 p.m. vs. Milwaukee, Matrix  
• May 16: 6:40 p.m. at Kansas City, Matrix 
• May 30: 7:05 p.m. at Texas, KMOV and Matrix  
• June 6: 7:15 p.m. vs. LA Dodgers, KMOV and Matrix  
• June 20: 6:15 p.m. vs. Cincinnati, Matrix  

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