MLB Moving Some Playoff Games to MLB Network

HanoverPretzel

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Oct 6, 2006
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Pertinent quote from the mostly unrelated article:

"Baseball also announced its new one-game wild-card playoffs will be televised Oct. 5 by TBS and that two division series games will shift from TBS to the MLB Network under a deal running through 2013. TBS Sports President David Levy said a rights fee was involved."

Link:

Selig: Oakland move might be considered - Yahoo! Sports

I guess Dish added MLB Network just in time.

Still, stuff like this is infuriating to me as a sports fan on a budget. In the old days, all your nationally televised sporting events and playoff games were on channels you'd get with a relatively basic package- you know, channels like ESPN, and that kind of thing, or even major over the air networks. Increasingly, stuff is being moved to higher tier channels like NBC Sports Channel (NHL), MLB Network (Exclusive *playoff* games), NFL Network (NFL Thursday night package that, granted, has periodically sprung into and out of existence- I remember a Thursday night package on ESPN or TNT back in the day that disappeared for some years and came back as an NFLN thing).

I mean, I often bring this up in reference to Dish not having these channels in the more basic packages sometimes, but I am also kind of ticked at the leagues themselves. Like why the heck did the NHL sign a deal like that with Versus/NBCSN in the first place? Why does MLB feel the need to move some of their playoff games over a channel that's not in a lot of households? It seems like it's always about the dollars over the best interest of the fans, and even a sport's long-term best interest (Retaining fans and creating new ones gets harder if people have trouble finding ways to watch the games).

Very frustrating. The whole thing. I mean, at this second, I think I have a package that includes MLB Network (It's in AT200, right?), but I can't always afford that. If I switch providers, I may wind up with a deal that sets me up with a package that doesn't include it also. My father and some much younger siblings are sports fans, and they can't pay for NFL Network, MLB Network, etc., which are on a digital preferred or premiere tier with Comcast in his area (They do get NBCN, because they include it with regular expanded basic).

You want to know why people are always calling up asking for promos and threatening to quit? Why they switch providers constantly? Why some people cut the cord altogether? Well, there are a lot of reasons, but one simple one is that you are always having to pay more and are always getting less. Your package goes up in price and the channels may remain the same, but the sports games they used to show move on to lesser viewed channels you'd have to pay even more extra (Beyond the usually annual price increases on your own package) to get. You can say, well, sure the same package that had ESPN in 2000 has it now, but ESPN doesn't show all the events it used to show (And that's just one example), yet that package still costs a lot more anyhow.
 
I really think that the majority of blame should be put on the leagues. They've created their own networks, "season pass" packages and, with the NHL, sold their product to the highest bidder even though that bidder has a very small viewer base and is usually in the higher tiers. It's pure greed and it's one of the reasons why I'm not that big a sports fan anymore. I live in the Detroit area and we have FSN Detroit. With the exception of national telecasts, every game played by the Pistons, Red Wings and Tigers is on cable. Not one of their games are broadcast by a local ota station. We have the AT200 package and get the major league channels. But I would never give those billionaire b*****ds my money by paying extra for them.
 
Saw this on ESPN.com:

The two division series games will be available in more than 30 million fewer homes on MLB Network than on TBS -- that includes some hometown fans of the teams playing.
 
And is why Charlie only plays the sports roulette up to a point. :) Thankfully MLBTV worked out.
 
It's not going to end until people stop watching and the video providers start dropping the channels for lack of viewership.

But, what is going to happen is people are going to complain because MLB isn't in their base packages for the playoffs and MLB is going to pressure all the providers to move it to a lower package because it has so much compelling programming now. So when it goes in the lower packages those packages are going to go up in cost. MLB is going to make more money and 80-90% of subscribers are going to pay for yet another channel most will never watch.
 
It's not going to end until people stop watching and the video providers start dropping the channels for lack of viewership.
I agree and I hope at some point we do see some scaling back in the overall number of channels. In the "old days", we had fewer channels, but most of what we wanted to watch was on those channels. Now everything has a specialty channel and programming is spread across all those channels. Sure it is great to have choices, but at lot of those choices now are just unwanted garbage that forces everyone to pay more in order to get the quality programming in between.
 

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