The Caps have a history of starting off slow. The ratings battle could be interesting next year.

By the way Dan, no mention of Washington Capitals Day, as declared by the Mayor and City Council? That's got Bog Show written all over it.

19,000? That's it? How does that compare to, say, Wheel of Fortune? Or Full Court Press? Or that Hellie-Czarniak Redskins joint?

But certain bloggers on certain blogs will never be able to figure out why the Bullets and the NBA get more coverage from the likes of the(Com)Post than the Caps and will continue to rotely repeat the declining circulation numbers and advertising revenues as evidence that "they just don't get it."

Caps Nut must be talking about Ted and Ted's Take.

I'm spending my stimulus $$ on a bunch of crappy televisions so there will be multiple tvs in every room and i'll leave all them tuned into the Wiz

So, uh, Dan...any DC United numbers? Nat numbers from MASN, even?

As a fan of both teams, and a household who tunes into both, I think the comparison is unfair. The Caps have a hardcore, devoted fan base that the Wizards could only dream about. But I think the Wizards attract far more casual fans. And basketball just lends itself to television, whereas hockey can be difficult to follow on tv unless you truly understand the game.

But please don't start the Caps v Wiz debate. I understand why Caps fans are grumpy, because they feel the team doesn't get the attention it deserves. But it shouldn't come at the expense of Wiz coverage. You live in DC, root for ALL of the home teams, including United, the Nats, the Mystics, and anyone playing Philly, Dallas, New York, or even Cleveland. Focus people. We hate the guys from the other city, we love the guys from ours.

Thanks for printing these numbers, Dan. Very interesting. But I am kind of surprised that you use the word "comfortably" to describe the margin. As a Caps fan, a difference of 2,000 households, or about 10 percent, is actually a lot closer than I would have expected, considering that until late March and April, much more attention was paid to the Wiz in the local sports media than the Caps--and the NHL is general is dismissed as a "niche" sport compared to the NBA.

So if you add up all the people attending the games in person and all of the people watching the games on television, you find that far less than 1% of the Washington metropolitan area cares about any particular Caps or Wiz game. I can only imagine the numbers are even worse for the Nats, United, and Mystics. It's amazing any non-Skins team can survive here; they should be very thankful to the Post for keeping them in the news.

@athea: in recent years, United has gotten better ratings on Comcast than the Caps; they've apparently been about what the Wizards get...these figures are a bit hard to come by, though, so I figured I'd see if Agent Steinz had come across the United ratings while he was digging for Caps/Wiz numbers.

i think the wizards games should be put on cw channel 50.

There actually were a few Wizards games on CW 50. The problem with placing more games on CW 50 could be The CW itself. Broadcast stations usually have obligations to limit preemptions of network programming.

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