The Media Notepad: Fueled by Caitlin Clark, Fever-Sky scores highest ratings for WNBA in over two decades

Caitlin Clark vs. Sky. (USA Today)

Also: Final Wheel with Pat Sajak draws four-year viewership high; Tegna’s Daily Blast Live to end 

The WNBA continues to soar to new ratings heights as Sunday’s Chicago Sky-Indiana Fever game illustrated thanks to the heated rivalry between the two teams courtesy of Caitlin Clark.

Despite the 11 a.m. Chicago start time, the contest airing on CBS drew 2.252 million viewers – the most-watched WNBA game on any network in 23 years and up a whopping 225 percent from the comparable game in the slot last year (Mercury-Liberty), and peaked with nearly three million viewers. The struggling Paramount Plus saw a much-needed boost as the Sky-Fever game was the most streamed WNBA match ever on the platform across minutes, households, and average minute audience.

In Indianapolis where the game aired at noon ET, CBS affiliate WTTV drew a 4.4 household live-plus-same day rating, topping all metered markets. In Chicago, CBS-owned WBBM-TV tied Las Vegas’ KLAS for fifth with a 2.1 rating, proving the Sky has more of a climb to draw more viewers locally.

Setting the stage for this is when the two teams met earlier this month when the Sky’s Chennedy Carter shoved Clark down in a non-play foul, generating plenty of discussion and “hot takes” afterward. This past Sunday’s game was also a physical affair, with Sky rookie Angel Reese committing a hard foul on Clark. Even though it didn’t generate the same kind of ridiculous nonsense we saw coming from the media like the Carter foul on Clark during June 1’s game, it generated discussion nevertheless.

The local media hasn’t been kind to the Sky as the team has a history of not making players available after games and was recently fined by the WNBA after they failed to do so after the first Fever game. Sky coach Teresa Witherspoon threw a tantrum and stormed out of a press conference after losing to the woeful Washington Mystics on June 14. Meanwhile, Resse belittled a Sun-Times columnist Tuesday during another press conference (the Sun-Times have their own reputation issues as I’ve documented on this blog – especially with the paper employing “rat” Jay Mariotti for sixteen years.)  Judging by the reaction to the inane piece, you wonder if the Sun-Times’ Reader Alienation Plan – as I called it in 2012 – is again in effect as the paper is currently in ownership turmoil. Then again, all local media outlets and sports teams seem to have an “alienation plan” these days. 

The Sky isn’t exactly a model franchise either – the team is poorly run (the front office even makes the White Sox look like the Yankees by comparison), has no real practice facility, and a terrible stitched-together TV deal despite winning a championship in 2021. With a 5-9 team amid a prolonged slump in Chicago sports, casual fans can easily skip over the Sky given they don’t need another terrible team to follow.

The Sky plays the Fever and Clark again this Sunday at 3 p.m. our time on ESPN, this time at Wintrust Arena, so I guess we will have a fresh bunch of idiotic “hot takes” to talk about Monday morning.

I’m sleeping in. 


(Ricky Middlesworth/ABC via Getty Images)

Pat Sajak’s swan song as host of Wheel Of Fortune on June 7 was a huge hit.

According to Nielsen, the syndicated game show distributed by CBS Media Ventures and produced by Sony Pictures Television was the highest-rated program the entire day (excluding sports) in all of television (6.2 household rating), averaged a 5.0 rating for the week and drew 8.5 million viewers, up 16 percent from the comparable week last year. Virtually all clearances were in the one-hour “prime access” period, between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., depending on your time zone.

Friday’s episode drew 11.03 million viewers – just below the 11.315 viewers the NBA Finals averaged over five games (we’ll have more on the NBA Finals in the next post.) It also topped every game of the Stanley Cup Final so far, and scored its highest viewership count since April 2020, at the height of the pandemic. 

Chicago ratings for the final show were not available. Wheel has aired locally on ABC 7 since January 1984 and with a few exceptions, dominated the 6:30 p.m. time slot for decades. Sajak is a Chicago native, growing up in the South Lawndale neighborhood (often referred to as Little Village) and graduated from Columbia College.

Sajak announced his retirement from Wheel last year after 43 years as host, replacing Chuck Woolery as host of the daytime version and was the host of the syndicated version starting in September 1983 when it was cleared in only 42 percent of the country without a New York City clearance according to then-distributor King World (Wheel would clear WCBS-TV in 1984 before it moved to WABC-TV in 1990.)

Starting in September, American Idol and American Top 40 host Ryan Seacrest will take over as host while Vanna White will continue her letter-touching (nee turning) role for at least another two years. Despite his departure, Sajak will remain with the show as a consultant.


Tegna has decided to call it quits on its syndicated daily newsmagazine show Daily Blast Live after seven seasons.

“Daily Blast Live will be sunset after this season’s final show on Friday, Sept. 6,” Tegna said in a statement. “We wish to thank our incredibly talented on-air talent and production team for bringing daytime viewers seven seasons of energetic, humorous and thoughtful debate. We look forward to celebrating DBL’s best moments in the coming months ahead of the show’s conclusion.”

The show was pitched as BOLD with MGM as a partner, as station groups were looking more into producing their own fare instead of spending money to acquire expensive shows from syndicators – a concept pioneered in the 1970s when Group W launched PM/Evening Magazine on its five stations before selling the show as a cooperative in syndication.

MGM dropped out in 2017 and Tegna renamed the show Daily Blast Live, launched it on their stations, and hired Sony to sell the show to the rest of the country. However, Blast could never obtain full national distribution as station groups showed no interest and failed to crack stations’ schedules in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia – the nation’s four largest markets.

Zap2It TV listings initially showed a late-night clearance at WBBM-TV for the start of the show’s seventh season last September as the first foray into a top-four market, but for unknown reasons never made it on the air.

Produced at Tegna’s KUSA Denver, DBL featured former B96 (WBBM-FM) Eddie & JoBo co-host Erica Cobb as a correspondent.

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