This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Real Salt Lake, KTVX and KUCW announced with great fanfare that the local TV stations would air 30 games this season. All in HD. And all live.

Well, almost all live.

The CW leaned on its affiliates — including Channel 30 — to telecast the series finale of "One Tree Hill" in pattern this past Wednesday. Which meant the RSL-Montreal game aired on a two-hour tape-delay.

"Certain shows, I wouldn't do it," said KTVX/KUCW president and general manager Matt Jacquint. "But I was, like, 'Fine, it's your series finale. I'll run soccer at 9:00.' "

This was about trying to keep everybody as happy as possible. Not about money, because KUCW makes more off the "Big Bang Theory" and "How I Met Your Mother" reruns that normally air at 10 and 10:30 p.m. than it does off RSL games.

"If it was about money, I would have put soccer at 1 a.m.," Jacquint said. "And I'm not going to do that."

Notwithstanding that "One Tree Hill" was a truly terrible show, there are fans out there who wanted to see how it ended. If you've stuck with it for nine seasons, that's only fair.

However, just about anybody who wanted to see "OTH" could have: A) watched it at midnight, as KUCW had planned; B) recorded it and watched it later; or C) watched it online.

As opposed to a sporting event, which conventional wisdom tells us just isn't the same tape-delayed. Although conventional wisdom might be wrong.

Not only did the game more than double the rating of the "OTH" finale, but the numbers were higher in the second half than they were in the first.

"Do people go to the game, come home and then watch the second half again?" Jacquint wondered.

(Um, at least some of us did.)

"OTH" peaked at a 0.8 rating locally in its last 15 minutes; the RSL game averaged a 1.6 rating from 9 to 11 p.m. and peaked at a 2.6 at 10 p.m. — more than three times the best the prime-time soap could muster.

And, by the way, those soccer numbers are pretty good. Not huge, by any means, but good. And they've been even better on Saturdays.

Channel 4 averaged about a 2.5 rating for its two Saturday RSL games, which is what the station gets for ABC's NBA coverage on Sundays.

"I'll take a 2.5 all day," Jacquint said. "I'll take this 1.6 all day on Channel 30. And on a tape-delay, that's great."

Which doesn't mean he wants to delay more games. Upcoming Saturday games don't appear in any danger, because The CW doesn't program Saturday nights and ABC airs mostly reruns.

But this could happen again with midweek games.

"We're going to run into that every once in a while," Jacquint said. "We don't want to tape delay a lot of games, and we won't. But there's going to be some."

Scott D. Pierce covers television for The Salt Lake Tribune. Email him at spierce@sltrib.com.