Belmont ratings drop from '04

Final ratings for last Saturday's 92-minute Belmont Stakes broadcast on NBC was a 4.5, a 60 percent drop from last year's broadcast.

Last year's Belmont broadcast, featuring the bid by Smarty Jones to win the Triple Crown, received an 11.3 rating, the second-highest-rated sports broadcast of the year to that date, behind the Super Bowl.

Share for the Belmont broadcast this year was an 11, down 58 percent from last year's share of 26. Share measures the percentage of televisions in use at the time tuned to the broadcast. Each rating point equals 1.096 million households.

The rating this year equaled that of 2001, the last time a Triple Crown was not on the line.