I was watching the Royals game this afternoon when the announcer mentioned that Giants pitcher Randy Johnson had a no-hitter through 5 innings. I immediately switched to the Giants game only to discover the game was blacked out in Utah. The reason for the blackout is the Giants were playing the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Diamondbacks have territorial rights to broadcast its games in Utah. MLB Extra Innings cannot broadcast a game in the market where a team has territorial rights. The frustrating part of it all is, even though the Diamondbacks have territorial rights to broadcast its games in Utah, Arizona games are not available in the Salt Lake City market. The FSN station that is available on Directv in Salt Lake broadcasts the Colorado Rockies games but the Diamondbacks games are unavailable. Looking at the MLB blackout map below, it becomes clear that Major League Baseball needs to rethink its blackout policy.
click on the map for larger image
I'm lucky living in Utah because the only team I cannot see play is the Diamondbacks. In Iowa, the Cardinals, Royals, Cubs, White Sox, Brewers, and Twins are not available to MLB Extra Innings subscribers. If one of the local stations does not carry the game, the fans of these teams living in Iowa are unable to see their favorite team play. In Las Vegas, the Angels, Dodgers, Giants, A's Diamondbacks, and Padres games are all blacked out. There is no way these types of blackouts are in the best interest of baseball. Baseball needs to make the broadcasts of its games more available. The solution is simple, if a station in a local market is not carrying the broadcast the game should be available on MLB Extra Innings. Bud Selig has made an effort to grow baseball's popularity and making more games available for fans to watch is a way to do this.
3 comments:
I got MLB extra innings for the first time this year and have been wondering why I can never get diamondbacks games.
what MLB, FOX, TBS and all the other crooked folks with their hands in the jar need to do is try one month of black out free coverage and see what the result would be. my bet is rating would increase, sponsors would get more customers, more fans would get to see their team play, and they might be inclined to buy MLB team gear......who knows. could be the start of a sports coverage revolution...
I used to live in the Detroit area, a fan of the Tigers before the day of Designated Hitter. Moved to Arizona. Had Chicago Cubs, LA Dodgers and Angels radio, saw Oakland A's on antenna TV. Dodgers and Cubs radio just didn't match my experience with Ernie Harwell, radio man for Detroit. Here come the D-Backs, in the National League, no Designated Hitter, they were on antenna TV, they were on a news radio station. And I attended some games at the park. D-backs beat the Padres and beat Detroit twice in my presence. No longer on free TV, and the radio went to all-sports format. I have no use for all-sports and no use for satellite TV. Bye-bye baseball.
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