Astros Lost In Local TV Ratings To Out-Of-Market WNBA Game

On Saturday, the Astros set an all-time low for viewership in the Houston area, with an average of 915 households tuning in for Houston's loss to the Angels. That's sad, but this is sadder.

According to a source with access to the detailed Nielsen figures, the Astros game drew an average of 1,000 viewers locally over the three-plus hour broadcast. A Sky-Lynx WNBA game on NBA TV, which went head-to-head with the Astros game for more than two hours, was seen by an average of 1,500 viewers in the Houston market.

It's as painful as it is empirical: More Houstonians watched a women's basketball game between Chicago and Minnesota than watched the Houston Astros.

Here's our earlier story on the ratings.