Saturday, May 9, 2009
MLB TV and Fox Saturday games
MLB tv is really, nice and all, but the whole bullshit with the Fox Saturday games really pisses me off. Being on the west coast, I am not getting the Sox-Rays game, but the Dodgers-Giants. Fine. What really kills me, though, is that the game is blacked out on MLB.tv because it is a "national broadcast." What definition of national leaves out large areas of the country?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
it's a perpetual disappointment. Just be glad, though, that they changed it from "all Saturday day games" to "all Saturday games starting at 1:10 or later." 1:05 and 1:07 games don't get blacked out. A couple of years ago they would have been.
I believe MLB recently renewed their contract with Fox. So...get used to it.
Also, if you're like me and don't have ESPN, they've been streaming their Sunday night games (which are blacked out on MLB.tv) on espn360.
yup, similar experience for me today. ready to sit down, relax, watch the sox game, and boom, blacked out for no reason. of course, it sounds like it wasn't really worth watching anyway...
apparently my pitching staff ain't worth watching either except to see explosions.
C'mon Spencer, explosions are fun to watch. I guess maybe not when you're the one doing the exploding...
Speaking of espn360, they're currently offering a replay of the Amherst/Williams baseball game from last week, if anyone is interested. I'm not sure how they knew to market that to me - they must have my college info on record somewhere.
Don't even get me started on ESPN 360. Unless you have RCN or some obscure cable provider, you can forget watching what appears to be a pretty awesome service. Also, Comcast is at an "impasse" with NFL Network, so I could lose that too. Apparently, cable is just too cheap these days.
I actually come down on Comcast's side in the NFL network confrontation. All the cable channels get placed in a tier and the network's get a certain amount of money per subscriber for everyone who pays for that tier. The NFL network wants to be on the basic tier (along with Comedy Central, ESPN, etc). In general, the sports channels are more expensive, ESPN is ~$2.50, while Comedy Central is $1-$1.50 and most other channels are in the $0.50 range. Almost all of this cost is passed on to the consumer. Despite being a specialty network that is only relevant for 8 games out of the year (seriously - when else is anyone going to watch the NFL network?) the NFL wants to be paid like an ESPN, which is just plain ridiculous. While the cable companies are pretty terrible for consumers (woohoo - local monopolies! we can fuck everyone over!) this is a pure money grab by the NFL, which supposedly made well over a billion dollars last year. They rework their broadcast deals so they have games to broadcast on their new, extremely expensive channel and try to strongarm the cable companies into accepting it. Pretty fucking dirty if you ask me.
Mark, your ISP regulates whether or not you can watch ESPN360? Weird...
No problems on Verizon (DSL).
Yeah, ESPN 360 is only available on certain cable providers. It knows what you are on when you go to the 360 page and gives you a form to fill out to complain to your cable provider. It's obnoxious.
Post a Comment