Media
NESN’s linear Bruins broadcasts averaged a 2.64 rating, per Nielsen Media data, up 14 percent over 2024-25.
TD Garden’s bull gang won’t be needing the Bruins’ boards or Celtics’ floor again until the fall. Jim Davis
May 9, 2026 | 5:42 PM
3 minutes to read
The Bruins’ and especially the Celtics’ seasons met abrupt ends in the playoffs.
But their seasons were ratings successes on the regional sports networks that carry their games locally, though the Celtics’ numbers are a bit murkier.
NESN’s linear Bruins broadcasts averaged a 2.64 rating, per Nielsen Media data, up 14 percent over 2024-25. That rating rose to 4.0 for its broadcasts of the six first-round playoff games against the Sabres.
The network said its viewership on its streaming app, NESN 360, was up 34 percent over last year, but did not specify the number of viewers that entails.
NBC Sports Boston’s broadcasts also had some Nielsen successes. The network said its broadcasts were the second-highest-rated among teams on regional networks, trailing only the Knicks.
For games that aired both nationally and locally, the NBC Sports Boston broadcast outrated its NBC or ESPN counterpart by more than 40 percent. Also, 50 percent of NBCSB’s broadcasts ranked first among all programs on the night they aired, and 76 percent were in the top two.
But when NBC Sports Boston was pressed for the specific rating, a spokesperson replied that its contract with Nielsen does not allow for giving out ratings.
That is true, but Nielsen typically lets it slide when the information is favorable to the network.
That’s where the murkiness comes in.
Viewership whiz Austin Karp at Sports Business Journal recently reported the Celtics were one of the teams that saw a “sharp drop” in local broadcast viewership year over year. SBJ didn’t have the specific rating, either. Hmm.
An appreciation of/for Sterling
John Sterling’s Broadway-influenced bombast on Yankees broadcasts for decades was annoying enough to Red Sox fans even when he wasn’t narrating one October nightmare or another prior to 2004.
But Sterling, who died on May 4 at age 87, was a class act, as I found out firsthand in 2015 while pulling together an oral history on the 30th anniversary of Larry Bird’s 60-point game.
Sterling was the Hawks’ play-by-play voice for that game, and had some fun insights, including the declaration that Bird invented the “heat check” that night. (It’s true.)
After our interview, he asked if I could send him a couple of copies of the story when it ran in print. I told him the piece was going to be 5,000 or so words, which was about 4,200 more than my print allowance, and thus it would run only online.
He said, “OK, can you print it out off the web and send it to me that way?”
I did not question the request, and mailed him some printouts.
A few weeks later, a kind note arrived in the mail, thanking me for helping him relive a great memory.
The various tributes you may have read about Sterling over the last few days make it clear that gracious acts were a bigger part of who he was than the grandiose home run calls.
I’m grateful to have found that out firsthand.
Not something for NBC-Peacock to be proud of
I say this without facetiousness: I lead this column every week with one new example or another of leagues and their broadcast partners cooking up some other way to inconvenience and alienate fans. Case in point: NBC’s decision to have some NBA playoff games overlap within a broadcast window, such as Tuesday’s Game 7 of the first-round series between the Pistons and Cavaliers and the conference semifinals opener between the Thunder and Lakers. Pistons-Cavaliers tipped off at 7 p.m. and Thunder-Lakers at 8:30 p.m. Because the games overlapped for approximately an hour, fans who wanted to watch Lakers-Thunder had to switch to subscription streaming service Peacock. Annoying, and par for the course these days … A tip of the notepad to Boston 25 anchor Mark Ockerbloom, who is signing off on May 15 after 22 years at the station. The good-natured Ockerbloom always has had a great sense of the importance of sports in New England, stemming from his days as a sports anchor at WMUR in Manchester, N.H., and later at NECN … Feel free to use your automated ball-strike challenge on this take, but after seeing it for the four billionth time (rough estimate) on NESN this week, I think Marcelo Mayer may be only the second-worst actor in that ubiquitous commercial.
