Viewers

Burnett Roane, a retired bricklayer in Waverly, figured he'd be watching a sporting event or a classic Hollywood movie by evening on his newly converted TV. Gone would be the days, he hoped, of jiggling rabbit ears sitting above his back bedroom TV in order to get a sharp picture. It didn't happen. Roane, a 63-year-old widower and great-grandfather, was anticipating a free, in-home converter installation by AmeriCorps volunteers who were to switch his TV from analog to digital television signal reception.

It is a loud voice beaming out of the tiny Middle Eastern peninsula country of Qatar in the Persian Gulf. Since its inception in 1996, it has been raising eyebrows in the Middle East and elsewhere for its provocative approach to news and analysis. After Sept. 11, the Al-Jazeera satellite channel, the first 24-hour all-news network in the Arab world, won international notice for its exclusive footage from Afghanistan and its broadcast of a series of taped speeches from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

The TV audience for the Baltimore Orioles' game Sunday was almost twice as large as the one for last year's home finale, according to Nielsen Media data supplied by the Orioles cable channel. A total of 91,000 viewers watched the Orioles Sunday compared to 47,000 on the last home telecast in 2011; that's an increase of 94 percent. The game's final out was seen by 136,000 viewers. For the season, the Orioles averaged 70,000 viewers a telecast, up from 44,000 the year before -- that's a 59 percent increase.

As reported yesterday, WBAL's new afternoon strategy of "Ellen" at 4 p.m. opened strong on Monday. And it did well again on Tuesday in Oprah's old spot with viewers 25 to 54 years of age. But WJZ, which had tennis on Monday, came roaring back Tuesday with the premiere of its afternoon lineup to dominate in overall afternoon viewership. From 2 to 3 p.m. WJZ's "The Talk" more than doubled WBAL drawing 53,300 viewers to 20,500 for Anderson Cooper's new show. Meanwhile, Jerry Springer drew 31,900 viewers for WBFF, with WMAR getting an audience of 13,200 for "One Life to Live.

The Ravens-Patriots and Giants-49ers championship games Sunday drew the largest audiences of any shows on television since the Super Bowl, according to Nielsen data released by the NFL. Sunday's games also made for the most watched championship Sunday in three decades. The Ravens loss to the Patriots was seen by 48.7 million viewers, while the Giants victory over the 49ers drew 57.6 million. But the latter was in prime time and went into overtime, which makes a big difference.

The decision wasn't in a league with the infamous one NBC made in 1968 to cut away from the ending of an incredible AFC football game to show a rerun of the film "Heidi," but some Baltimore area viewers were feeling a "Heidi Bowl" kind of pain Sunday night when WJZ (Channel 13) left a extra inning Orioles game to carry the top-rated newsmagazine "60 Minutes. " "Epic" might be too strong a word for what was going on in Boston, but it was pretty great. The Orioles, after winning a 13-inning game Friday against the Red Sox and a regular 9-inning game Saturday, were locked in a duel with the Sox that had depleted both bull pens.

PBS yesterday reached into the ranks of the competition to name Pat Mitchell, an award-winning cable producer and executive at CNN-Time, as its new president and CEO. She is the fifth president in PBS' 30-year history and the first woman to hold that post. The move comes at a time when the future of the Public Broadcasting Service is being questioned, in part because cable channels are providing many of the same kinds of programs PBS used to offer exclusively. But Mitchell, 57, yesterday denied any major changes or reforms were in the works, stressing time and again during a news conference that PBS stood for something "singular, distinctive and unique.

When CBS launched its second reality TV show "Big Brother" last week, die-hard MTV fan Pear Musikabhumma tuned in to see if it would hook her like her all-time favorite show, "Real World." For seven years, Musikabhumma has religiously watched "Real World," which logs the adventures of seven young strangers thrown together in a luxurious house. But from the moment she saw the plainly furnished, 1,800-square-foot "Big Brother" house, the 23-year-old Baltimore lab researcher knew she was wasting her time.

Maybe the best way to cut through all the spin and counterspin on the Olympics is this: Last week, NBC was saying it would lose money on the Olympics. Yesterday, it said it might break even. Today, the network is saying it could turn a profit on the $1.18 billion investment. "Yeah, we think there's a small chance, a chance we could make a little bit of money over the next couple of weeks," Mark Lazarus, chairman of the NBC Sports Group, said in a conference call from London Thursday when asked if the network might turn a profit on the games.

Amid all the buzz about "re-inventing the evening news" and the "death of the anchorman era," Bob Schieffer for the past year has gone steadfastly about doing what he does best: Reporting the news in a conventional, straightforward manner with a maximum of authority and a minimum of fuss. And the old-school, Texas newsman - who Friday will celebrate his first anniversary as interim anchor of the CBS Evening News - has enjoyed a year unmatched by anyone else in TV news. Although NBC and ABC have spent millions launching new anchors for their flagship broadcasts, their audiences are in sharp decline.