The television ratings for the NCAA championship in men's volleyball were minuscule, an official for ABC-TV sports said last night.
The semifinals shown last Thursday on ESPN2 did a .06, while the national championship final between the University of Hawaii and UCLA came in at .11 with a .03 share.
By comparison, this year's Pro Bowl was the most-watched local sports event. The NFL All-Star game did nearly a 12 rating with an 18 share. The Aloha Bowl was second with an approximate 6 rating.
An edited version of the marathon match won by UCLA was rebroadcast on ESPN last Sunday. It had a .09 rating with a zero share.
It's tricky determining how many households actually watched the matches because ESPN2 only has a penetration rate of 32.28 percent of the nation's televisions.
One Nielsen ratings point for network television is equal to about one million households. The television ratings for the volleyball matches were figured on that basis, so only about 110,000 households saw the final match nationwide.
The matches were shown on a delayed basis nationally because of the NHL playoffs, but live locally thanks to some last-minute scrambling by Oceanic Cable.
Officials for the local cable company said earlier this week they had no idea how many people watched the matches in the island chain because they aren't in the ratings business.