Courtesy the Washington Post

(December 13, 2010) We're probably far enough into the season for one of our regular looks at the Caps vs. Wizards on television. The short answer: both teams are enjoying better ratings than they did a year ago, and the first-place Caps are narrowly beating the last-place Wizards in D.C.-area ratings.

Caps broadcasts on Comcast SportsNet, according to Nielsen data, were averaging a 1.56 household rating in the D.C. market through 27 CSN games. That was up 30 percent from the same time period last year, and up 52 percent from the same span in 2008. Ratings in Baltimore are up 68 percent over last year. And in recent years, the Caps' TV numbers have gone up significantly as the season has progressed.

Through the Wizards' first 17 appearances on Comcast SportsNet, the team was averaging a 1.47 household rating in the D.C. market, according to Nielsen data. That works out to about 34,000 homes, or about 2,000 fewer than the Caps have attracted. That number is 27 percent ahead of last year's overall Wizards average on CSN, although the Wizards obviously did increasingly poorly on TV as last season unraveled.

The Nats, lest you've forgotten, averaged a 1.4 on MASN and MASN2 last season, good for about 33,000 households.

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