Clinton and Obama didn't stand a chance against Beckett

Television ratings made available to the Globe show that there was only one true contest Sunday night and it wasn’t the Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire.

Unsurprising to anyone from the region, viewership of the Yankees-Red Sox game on ESPN was tremendously larger than the audience for the debate televised on a local New Hampshire television station and CNN. Indeed, it was more than ten times larger.

Inside the Boston television market, which covers most of the New Hampshire population, 68,000 people watched the debate on either WMUR or CNN, while 779,000 people in the market watched the Yankees-Red Sox game, according to Nielsen Media Researech, which measures TV ratings.

Those numbers were also similar nation-wide, according to Nielson.