Who owns the national TV rights to the 1:00 EST games on Saturdays? Is it Fox? Someone else? The bigger question is, why don’t they broadcast them? I have the MLB package and the games are not available, but they aren’t on national broadcast TV either. Why would MLB purposefully prevent people from watching their product? If they aren’t national games, why are there only 1 or 2 games at 1:00?
I don’t know about the Boston-Toronto game, but this afternoon’s Detroit-Yankees game is currently being broadcast on YES.
Neither of the games currently under way (DET-NYY, BOS-TOR) are blacked out for me. I’ve just been watching both of them on MLB.com.
According to the MLB site, only Saturday games starting after 1.10pm Eastern time, and before 7.05pm Eastern are blacked out. Basically, that means the games on the FOX Saturday afternoon broadcast.
Edit: Did you mean MLB package on cable TV, or on MLB.com?
The MLB package on cable. It’s not blacked out, just not available (no afternoon games are.) I know they say that not all games are available, but you’d think they’d show the Saturday afternoon games when kids, their future fans, could actually watch the whole game.
You’d also think they wouldn’t schedule World Series games to start close to 9 PM, but see, you’re thinking like an outsider. Why, you must be one of them stathead types, applying all that logic and reason.
The things is, games tend to be scheduled in such a way as to maximize the short-term revenue of the TV networks, rather than to ensure the long-term fanbase of Major league Baseball. As RickJay’s post suggests, the same thing happens in the World Series, where they not only start games outrageously late, but actually allow more time between innings so that FOX can cram more advertising into the broadcast.
I’d understand that (to a degree) if the game was broadcast nationally. But it looks like they are being shown in their own markets only (unless you have Yes on satellite, of course.)
Right, local only. Bos-Tor was on NESN, for instance.