While watching the Cubs/Astros game on WGN last night, I heard Chip Caray say something a little strange. He was telling of the upcoming games, and which ones would be televised on that channel, then commented that tonight’s game (Sunday at 7:05 Eastern) wouldn’t be televised due to the contract with ESPN. My interpretation of this is that ESPN has dictated (for lack of a better term) that no other networks can broadcast a baseball game at the same time, since it would steal viewers from ESPN’s core audience.
Does anyone know the particulars on this? And can one channel actually “control” another channel’s programming when both channels are dealing with the same institution?
Obviously, ESPN can’t ‘dictate’ what other stations broadcast. MLB, though, certainly can decide who can broadcast which games. ESPN no doubt negotiated a contract with some ‘exclusivity’ provisions.
It’s a give-and-take situation, naturally. ABC had tried to negotiate a deal with the NFL for the upcoming season in which the Monday Night schedule would be set weekly, rather than fixed at the beginning of the season. The NFL refused to make that change to the system after CBS and Fox threw fits about it. Why they threw fits is left as an exercise for the reader …
I suppose WGN could try to throw its weight around and fight ESPN’s exclusivity requests next time broadcast rights are negotiated with MLB. But I doubt it-while WGN-Chicago has more weight to throw around than you might think, they’re not as big as ESPN. Plus, their biggest threat (to not carry Cubs games anymore) would be seen as a transparent bluff, as WGN and the Cubs are both owned by the Tribune Corp. Plus, WGN has been carrying Cubs games since before the games were broadcast on TV, so that’s kind of sacrosanct.
CBS & Fox threw fits because ABC was afraid that they would be faced with the same problem that occured tow years ago, namely that many of the later season Monday Night games were between teams that quite frankly, “sucked dick” as far as their records were concerned. Therefore CBS & Fox saw ABC as trying to gain an unfair advantage by broadcasting all of the “hot games.”
I agree with CBS & Fox’s stance on this one: you do the best with the cards you’re dealt. Plus, Monday night Football, for all of the caterwauling about it’s ratings going down, has been in the Top 20 of the Neilsons for something like 23 years in a row, so they should just stop bitching and get on with it.
It is in the contracts between MLB and the broadcast networks. Nationally televised games will always get the nod over local broadcasters. The local stations know that and they have nothing to bitch about.
I had the “Extra Innings” package on DirectTV a couple years, and IIRC, ESPN had negotiated that only they could show Wednesday evening games, and Fox had negotiated that only they could show Saturday day games. That pretty much eliminated anyone else from broadcasting MLB games those days, including all the Fox Sports Wherevers that might have carried other games.
I can remember at least two instances this year where a Cubs game and a Braves game were being shown both on ESPN/WGN and ESPN/TBS. I thought it strange that ESPN would broadcast a game that could be seen by practically everyone on the other channels. Why weren’t those games blacked out?
I was interested when I heard this because I’ve been expecting some sort of suggestion like it for years - matchups that looked like they should be between playoff contenders at the start of the season turn out to be between a couple of eliminated teams, or worse, between the 11 and 3 team simply locking their homefield advantage at this point, and the 4 and 10 team whose season went into the toilet when their starting quarterback broke his leg in game 2.
Doing it week-by-week creates problems with stadium and team travel scheduling, and for fans who wish to plan to attend a game a couple weeks in advance. I thought what ABC had wanted was the right to determine mid-season which games would be on Monday night in the latter half, which sounded like a workable compromise to me.
The Sunday night slot is definitely exclusive to ESPN. I’m not sure what happens if a Sunday game is delayed by rain and stretches into that slot.
The Wednesday night games shown by ESPN can also be shown on local cable outlets, but I don’t believe they can be on local broadcast outlets. The late game on Wednesday nights, of which there isn’t a big selection to choose from, is almost always a Bay Area game if you live in Southern California and a Southern California game if you live in the Bay Area. Now that the Mariners are good, they are being televised a lot more frequently. When ESPN televises a game, there is some different deal with advertisers because all the teams turn off their ads behind home plate and then you get different ones superimposed.
That “solution” is exactly what got CBS & FOX pissed off. What right does ABC have to pick and choose which games they will telecast. ABC got into televising pro football VERY late in the game as these things go.Do CBS & FOX have less of a right to pick and choose what “showcase” games they want to broadcast?
The only way that I could see this working out is if Monday Night Football was rotated between CBS, FOX & ABC. That way, the whole picking and choosing of “showcase games” makes at least a bit of sense.
The problem is that pro football has 3 major networks carrying the games, while pro baseball and basketball are tied into one non-cable network, so it’s a hell of a lot harder to mess around with 3 network tv schedules then with one.
