Houstonians apparently had better things to do than watch the Astros Saturday night. Like, anything at all.


Just incredible Nielsen averages from the Astros' home loss to Anaheim, passed along by the Chronicle:



The game had a 0.04 Nielsen rating, which represents an average audience of about 915 households or about 1,000 viewers on average.


A thousand viewers! And that's even counting the ones who fell asleep with their TVs on! Reassuringly for the Astros, this is a record low and not the norm. Less reassuringly, it's not a record by much. Just last year, the Astros pulled a woeful 0.05 rating. I wrote at the time that figures could only go up from there. Mea culpa.

The Astros are part-owners of CSN Houston, which somewhat inexplicably pays the team $80 million annually to broadcast games. That's more than all but six other teams.

It's a lost season for the Astros, and the weather is cooling down, and there was a Dynamo game on at the time, and CSN Houston isn't available in many households. It happens. I'm just worried about Sept. 29th, when the Astros go up against the Texans game.