Fox, MLB To Increase Saturday Blackouts

So i’ll definitely be missing these games, being in Atlanta… Great news

Gonna be out of luck again in VA

Say, for example, you’re a Cubs fan in Los Angeles on a Saturday night when Fox is carrying regional games, but the Cubs aren’t being carried in LA. It would be simple for someone with a MLB.TV subscription to get the Cubs game, with the commercials from LA’s Fox station inserted.

Thank you Al, my situation exactly, so frustrated by this news

Seeing the map above brought this quote to mind.

Selig shows why he doesn’t care about the fans. When is this clown retiring again???

Somehow, I don’t think that the Packers, Bears, Chiefs, Rams, and Vikings are all blacked out on NFL Sunday Ticket in Des Moines. I imagine one or two of those teams are but not all five. I believe that the team(s) that are blacked out on Sunday Ticket in Des Moines can be seen on broadcast TV there. I bring up Des Moines because of the Cardinals, Royals, Twins, Cubs, White Sox, and Brewers, all claiming that territory. There aren’t enough regional sports networks in Des Moines to cover six MLB teams.

What a mess this continues to be.

Because I’m IN market for the Cubs in Iowa, I can’t get games on my cell or computer. There are times I would pay to watch or just have it available when there is not a TV around. So, I pay to have radio on my phone which makes no sense at all. I can have radio “in” market but not TV? Brilliant!

I love how MLB TV says this in big print

Baseball everywhere. Watch every out-of-market game LIVE or on demand on your favorite devices.

And then this in fine print

Blackout and other restrictions apply. Please click here for more info. Blackout restrictions subject to change. Please check this page periodically for updates.

And then this on another page

In addition, note:
•These blackout restrictions apply regardless of whether a Club is home or away and regardless of whether or not a game is televised in a Club’s home television territory.
•All live Toronto Blue Jays games are blacked out throughout the entire country of Canada.
•Additional teams may also be subject to blackout in parts of Canada based on their region.
•All live games will be blacked out in the U.S. territories of Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands during the MLB regular season.

This product is more about what’s blacked out instead of what I can see.

I can’t believe that they don’t understand baseball fans yet. I’m going to watch what I want to watch. But if I can’t see that, I’m probably not going to watch what you try to force down my throat.

At least on a PC. Doesn’t help much on a phone.
One of the greatest things MLB has done under BS is putting out MLB.TV and keeping it affordable. Blackouts though are still one of the dumbest things that continue under his reign.

Wouldn’t it make sense to handle the Saturday Fox Games similar to the NFL Ticket assuming you have bought MLB.TV or EI? Just my two cents.

to insure that baseball eventually falls permanently behind the NBA (of course the NFL is ahead) on the sports in America pecking order. Next up… MMA and “action” sports (just wait until the current tween / teen generation, who doesn’t give a flip about baseball thanks to Bud, gets to be the primary demo) on the way to leveling down with hockey in terms of viewership.

I really hate that this fossil is ruining the game I love.

The ad slots don’t line up and aren’t universal in length. Wouldn’t you have to have someone overseeing that? Probably a lot of people overseeing it, right? Considering the number of markets and the number of games available in each market. Then consider that every game isn’t going to be watched in every market, so you’d be allocating people to those games that aren’t really needed but they’d have to be there.

Or is this all automated? What happens when a game takes a quick break? I know the when I’m watching a local game on tv, the commercials are ran by the production crew, correct? How would this be done when there are 15 games in every single market?

One for dancing, and the other for pissing.

Is because there’s only one damn game on a Sunday night when it’s broadcasted, not five others. This is seriously starting to get ridiculous now…

Goodness Bud and MLB just wake the hell up.

…that MLB is contractually obligated to retain the blackout rules and can’t do anything about them until said contract (or contracts) runs out. Does anyone know anything more about this?

My immediate response is that any presumably long-term contract dealing with a medium as fluid as the Internet should be open to renegotiation. Maybe MLB didn’t anticipate online baseball viewing to have taken off the way it did. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do more to rectify the situation.

The MLB on FOX theme song. It’s not even the MLB on FOX theme song anymore, it’s the freaking NFL on FOX theme song for any sporting event on the national FOX network. They should switch it back to the MLB theme song, because it sounds more appropriate.

When FOX got their new man in late 2010, he wanted to make the NFL on FOX theme song the universal theme song for any sports broadcast. He wanted the song to represent the entire FOX Sports network. When they did the switch in 2010, I didn’t like it at first. Then I thought I would get used to it. I am still not used to it and still don’t like it. The NFL song should be played with NFL games only, the MLB song should be played with MLB games only, and so on, and so forth with all the other sports that are broadcast on FOX.

At least on the regional FOX networks, they still play the MLB on FOX theme… for the time being.

I will never…EVER..forget the year he tried to make Extra Innings only available on DirecTV. When asked what about the millions of baseball fans who don’t have DirecTV he simply responded “Well, all they have to do is switch cable providers.”

Jackass.

to Extra Innings people, my wife, my barber, my dog – everyone. Only my wife listens, bless her heart. Then she suggests that I cancel MLB package, and I quickly retreat.

It’s a good number of Cubs games that get whacked here already, usually marquee games, and now the problem gets worse. These guys running this (Bud) are painfully dumb.

I will email MLB and Extra Innings again and again, keep trying. I shall not give up!

is just poorly worded code for “Yankees or Red Sox Game”

Pretty sure ESPN already does that on Sunday nights.

I’m in the minority who actually likes these anachronistic weekend rules. Plenty of baseball to be seen during the week, knowing that Sat/Sun is a waste of time just frees up my weekends for more interesting things.

Pud Selig’s an idiot. Pretty much everything he’s touched during his tenure has decreased the fan base of his sport. He’s a typical short-sighted corporate exec, whose business experience comes from selling cars (quick hit, screw the long-term relationship), that doesn’t understand that the age demographic that supports his sport is getting older and isn’t being rebuilt by following generations.

His sport may be making money today from corporate decision makers who grew up with baseball as their first love, but these policies are unsustainable in the long run. All one has to do to see this already is to look at the decline in viewership for the playoffs. Between the insipid FOX coverage, the constant blackouts of pretty much everything but Yankees & Red Sox during the season, and the gaps in playing that kill any interest and momentum, only the really hard-core and invariably aging fan cares anymore.

Pud Selig’s legacy to the sport will be that he took the National Pastime and turned it into a corporate entertainment sideshow full of gimmicks, steroids, bad decisions, and an utter lack of respect for the traditions that made the game uniquely American in the first place. His successor will have a very long row to hoe to repair the damage of his tenure.