St. Louis ? Television ratings for the World Series hit a record low for the opener, then rebounded for Game 2.

The St. Louis Cardinals’ 7-2 victory over the Detroit Tigers on Saturday night received an 8.0 fast national rating and 15 share, Fox said Monday, down 16 percent from the previous record low for an opener, a 9.5 for last year’s 5-3 Chicago White Sox victory over the Houston Astros.

Detroit’s 3-1 victory in Game 2 on Sunday night got an 11.5/18, up 4 percent from the 11.1 rating for Chicago’s 7-6 win in the second game last year.

Overall, that left the first two games averaging a record-low 9.8, down 5 percent from the previous bottom, a 10.3 for the first two games last year.

Fox’s 6.5 average rating for the league championship series was down 4 percent from last year’s 6.8.

On each of the first two nights of the World Series, Fox won prime time. The Game 1 rating was the highest for Saturday night on any network since the NCAA basketball semifinals on April 1 on CBS. Game 2 was the highest-rated Sunday night on Fox since the NFC Championship on Jan. 22.

Fox finished second in prime time last week for the first time this season, 0.1 behind ABC.

The national rating is the percentage of U.S. television households tuned to a program, and each point represents 1,114,000 homes. The share is the percentage of households watching a broadcast among those homes with televisions in use at the time.

Game 1 got a 41.0 rating in St. Louis and a 32.5 in Detroit, while Game 2 received a 47.5 rating in St. Louis and a 42.9 in Detroit.

Because of perennially low ratings for all Saturday night programming, baseball and Fox are switching the start of the World Series to Tuesday beginning next year.