Yes, they are allowed one more commercial between innings (and possibly for pitching changes).
For me, I didn’t watch most of the Colorado/Arizona series because I was falling asleep. I can stay up past midnight when it’s my team (Cleveland) and when it’s the postseason (I don’t stay up during the regular season for west coast games). But I can’t stay up for a random postseason game that won’t end until 3. I just can’t.
We have 24 hour sports radio, various ESPN channels, 30 minute pre-games and post games, websites and multiple newspaper articles every day on the playoffs. I don’t think the occasional story on the business side (ratings, etc.) prevents discussion of the game itself.
Sometimes the business side is very important, since it can affect your enjoyment of the game. Me, I can barely make it through a full postseason game, once you get into the late innings, and start with making multiple pitching changes in an inning, I get sick of the downtime and switch to something else. The games take too long, they often start too late, the action drags to a crawl, is it a surprise that ratings take a hit?
Sure, but a journalist writing a proper, well-thought-out article on the business aspects of MLB’s television deal and the importance of postseason audience is quite different from a journalist dumping some context-free lamentation about team popularity into the middle of an article that’s supposed to be about the game and the series itself. I think’s that’s what annoyed the OP, and i get sick of it too.
Yep.
And not just the ratings; also the fans at the game. With Fox’s extra between-half-innings time the people who pay to go to the game get to sit through longer baseball-free chunks of time, and they can’t even flick through the other stations to see what else is on. And, because the TV rights holders insist on having games in peak viewing time, they also have to sit there in very un-baseball-like weather.
One of the guys on Baseball Prospectus complained last postseason about some of the bullshit baseball fans have to deal with, and it hit the mark, IMO:
And speaking of commercials, did you know that it is apparently October and that there is only one October per year (apparently that slut August lied to me about being October), that this is our country, that Frank Callendo has a new TV show coming out, that there is something known as Transformers, that I can solve all my problems with various drugs here in a couple decades when they’ve gone generic, and that product placement has gotten completely out of control when teams are willing to name players after consumer products (Coco Crisp, I’m looking at you.)
and that I am never ever going to watch Frank’s show.
They were discussing some of this on the radio this morning…how MLB tried to get game two of the NLC series at 1:00 or so Arizona time so it would lead into the ALC game, which would be prime time for the east coast. Basically, the Diamondbacks managed to talk them out of it, but we still had to play game 1 at around 5:00 local time, in order to let the east coast watch a game between Colorado and Arizona. Lots of people simply stayed home - they didn’t sell out until game day - because the traffic and hassle to get to the ball park at 4:30, even if they could get off work, wasn’t worth it.
So it was a win-lose for Arizona…if you don’t count the, you know, lose-lose-lose-lose.
Exactly. Examining pro sports as business is perfectly legit, but not for sportswriters. There really is a difference between covering business and covering sports, even though there is some overlap. I want to read about the pitching matchups, the best hitters, coaching strategies, etc. What do TV ratings or the payrolls of either club have to do with who wins the series? Obviously they both have good enough players to get this far, whatever they pay them, so why not talk about THAT? I suspect most fans of either team feel the same way.
jsgoddess, where are you at? I grew up in Holmes County, south of Wooster, though now I live in southeastern PA.
I live in Perry County, about 20 miles from Zanesville.
With Notre Dame’s 1-6 start, they are dangerously close to not qualifying for a BCS bowl. They better be careful…
I’m guessing you might like this “promo.”
As for whether discussing how a team’s small market will affect World Series ratings is a relevant topic for sportswriters, I have to disagree with the OP. However, in discussions about the health of MLB and its showcase event of the season–the World Series–there is an elephant in the room that is scarcely being addressed beyond comments about its tusks (i.e., TV ratings). That elephant is the fact that MLB is in steady decline as a popular sport in the U.S. and that the erosion of World Series ratings over the last few decades is proof of that. Having a big market team like the Yankees or Red Sox in the Series might cause a temporary spike in the ratings but, as seen in link provided by Justin_Bailey, the general trend has been downward since 1980. And if you need more proof, look at the fact the NLCS was on basic cable–not network TV–this year. The baseball play-offs used to be such a ratings-grabber that the other networks rarely put new episodes of their shows against them because they knew they’d get killed in the Nielsons. Now, it’s apparently considered of such little importance beyond its niche audience that it’s banished to basic cable.
Jsgoddess’ point is an excellent one. Measuring baseball’s popularity by the World Series TV ratings is a ludicrous way to measure the sport’s overall popularity. That’s the method used by NASCAR’s shills who claim that their ratings are higher than baseball’s, which conveniently overlooks the fact that major league baseball (to say nothing of minor league baseball) puts on 15 very well attended, and well viewed by local tv ratings, events in 15 locales just about every day for 6 months, in comparison to NASCAR’s 2 or 3 races per week over roughly 8 months.
Y’know, you had a pretty cogent pitting until you threw this in. Looks like karma has a way of smacking hubris like that. Care to wager on tomorrow’s game?
I completely understand the logic behind the writer’s observation. It makes sense that you might manipulate the schedule in order to show the big-market team in primetime, BUT…
I remember this incident, because I live in Michigan and was looking forward to watching the Tigers. I’ve gone to many a baseball game, and he conditions at that point (earlier in the day) were pretty terrible and were only going to get worse. If it were more borderline, I might buy the BP guy’s analysis. As the facts stood, I think it was a strech for him to draw that conclusion given the facts surrounding that particular incident. It seemed completely legit from my perspective that first pitch would be changed - a by-product was simply that the big-market team got the primetime spot.
I’m sorry Fear Itself, were you saying something about karma? I had a hard time hearing you over that wailing sound coming from a couple hundred miles to the west.
Look, you are all missing the big picture, the real question:
How will a Rockies-Bosox series affect Joe Torre’s relationship with the Yankees? And will they be able to keep Mo and A-rod?
Well, then it’s jackpot time for Major League Baseball! 