Wild lost on the ice but won big on the air

The Wild lost the opening game of its playoff series to Colorado on Wednesday, but the team did score at least one impressive victory.

Minnesota's 3-2 overtime defeat had an 11.3 rating (192,857 households) and 22 share on KSTC, beating every show in the Twin Cities market, including Fox's tremendously popular "American Idol" (10.3/19) on KMSP and CBS' "CSI: New York" (10.0/17) on WCCO.

The Wild game hit its peak with a 16.0 rating (273,072 households) and 33 share from 10:30-10:45 p.m. (The rating is the percentage watching a program among all television households; share is the percentage tuned in among those homes with TVs in use at the time.)

The Twins and Timberwolves also added to the prime-time competition Wednesday night. The Twins' 12-5 victory over the White Sox had a strong 8.9 rating and 16 share on WFTC (Ch. 29); the woeful Wolves' 122-90 loss to New Orleans managed a minuscule 0.1 rating (1,707 households) with a 0 share.

The Wild's rating Wednesday was better than any KSTC (Ch. 45) registered for the team's opening-round series against Anaheim last season and was the team's highest since it fired a 23.2/40 on KMSP for a Game 7 victory over Vancouver in the second round of the 2003 playoffs.

FSN North will air tonight's second game, and there is little doubt both the cable network and KSTC executives are hoping respected NBC and TSN hockey analyst Pierre McGuire is correct in his prediction that this will be a "long" series. Playing seven games might be tough on Wild coach Jacques Lemaire, but if Wednesday's figure provides any indication it could mean monster ratings.

• The Wild also had significant increases for its regular-season ratings on both KSTC and FSN North. KSTC was up 64 percent (4.1/8 from 2.5/5) and FSN was up 164 percent (2.9/5 from 1.1/2). Part of FSN's improvement was caused by a glitch with Nielsen's ratings system last year that has been fixed.

An ESPN spokesman confirmed Thursday that former Gophers football coach Glen Mason was in Bristol, Conn., this week to meet with officials from the network but made it clear the talks were informal.

"We meet with a lot of people," Mike Humes said. "We haven't had any discussions with him about a role with the company."

Mason worked primarily as a game analyst for the Big Ten Network last season in his first year out for coaching. Any potential role for Mason at ESPN likely would be in the studio.

• The Thunder and Clear Channel-owned KFXN (690 AM) Radio are expected to announce an agreement next week that will call for the station to air five of the team's home games this season. Wild radio voice Bob Kurtz would do play-by-play.

• CBS' coverage of the NCAA men's basketball tournament finished with a 5.6 rating and 12 share, its lowest-ever rating except for 2003 (5.0/10), when the network had some games pre-empted by coverage of the beginning of the war in Iraq.

• Former Twins great Rod Carew will be among a group of Hall of Fame players who will appear on select Sundays this season as guest analysts on ESPN's "Baseball Tonight." Carew will be on July 13. Wade Boggs will join this Sunday at 11:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. Also set to appear are Juan Marichal (May 11) and Phil Niekro (May 25). ESPN also announced that Buck Showalter will return as an analyst on "Baseball Tonight." Showalter worked on the program in 2001-02 before leaving to manage the Texas Rangers.

• Twins Sunday home games on WFTC this season also can be heard in Spanish through the secondary audio programming channel provided on many remote controls.

• Dean Johnson, a longtime state legislator from Willmar who is now on the Board of Regents at the University of Minnesota, expressed his frustration with the Big Ten Network on Thursday during the board's finance committee meeting. "I get asked more about the Big Ten Network than tuition," he said. "We've got to get this thing figured out with the Big Ten Network and Comcast and the others because this is getting old." Johnson should be glad to know that an agreement between BTN and Comcast remains close to being done.

• The NHL Network will show the U.S.-Canada gold medal game from the International Ice Hockey Federation World women's championship at 6 a.m. Saturday.

Judd Zulgad • jzulgad@startribune.com