MLB
Right now, the Dodgers and Giants are playing for the NL West. The A’s and Angels are playing for the AL West. These are two of the most exciting games of the year, classic duels between rivals with divisional crowns and playoff births on the line.
I couldn’t watch either of these games no matter how hard I tried. They’re blacked out on MLB.tv because Fox has national Saturday broadcast rights. Of course, my local Fox channel is showing the news. At some point, they’ll follow with Cops, and maybe a re-run of Seinfeld or two. I could go to the local sports bar, who won’t be able to show the games. I could go to a friends house who has MLB Extra Innings, but you won’t get the games there either.
Major League Baseball has made sure that everyone living in the eastern time zone can’t watch the two most exciting games of the year. Well done, boys. Great way to build your product.
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17 Responses to “MLB”
Who can care about baseball at a time like this, with St. Helens ready to toss a fistful of ash a couple of yards in the air?
Wait a second…
It’s on Fox Sports back in Seattle.
If you have DirecTV and get the national feeds of the major networks, you could watch SF-LA on FoxW. In my case, I’m watching A’s-Angels on the Seattle Fox station and SF-LA on KTTV-LA. WNYW-NY (Fox East coast) probably had a game on earlier but I was hiking….
I’ll be cancelling my MSN premium subscription on Monday due to the blackout rules. What’s the point in having access to all these games on the internet when you aren’t allowed to watch the really important ones? I’m guessing that mlb.tv will be blacking out all games of interest during the playoffs also. Us west coasters, will be working during any day games but won’t be able to watch them on the net.
Up there in brilliance with having World Series games end well past bedtime on the East Coast, not having Games of the Week until July like they did for several years, and so on.
Major League Baseball- we might as well have 10,000 monkeys market it.
Oh, and congrats to the Dodgers- dropping a seven-spot in the 9th to clinch the NL West and put the Giants on the verge of elimination.
Hmm, that reminds me, it’s been a few weeks since New GM Watch…
LA, Paul DePodesta: 93-68, .578
Cincinnati, Dan O’Brien: 76-85, .472
Seattle, Bill Bavasi, 63-97 .394
PS- Congratulations to the Angels, too…and too bad about the A’s. watch Joe Morgan talk about Moneyball again and get it wrong. Aaaargh.
I am in the same boat. I bought mlb.tv for the entire year so I could watch the m’s and all the other games(great for fantasy baseball). Of course all the games during the day saturday are blocked out so fox can only show ONE game during the day to me in boston. It is garbage, atleast with wednesday night baseball you get more then one game(sometimes 3).
I was thinking about email mlb to complain to them about how throughout the season saturday games are blacked out.
I’ve called MLB’s help line to complain about their blackout policies. I live in central Indiana, a three-hour drive from Chicago, but we’re in the blackout zone for the Cubs, White Six and Reds. The latter two team are not even available on local radio.
This is Cubs territory, but if they’re not on WGN, they’re unavailable. Of course today, Fox showed us the Cubs, blacking out the two really important games. There was a time when a Saturday game of the week made sense, back before cable and satellite. Now it’s an anachronism that benefits no one but the networks and MLB.
I think the blackout rules are absolutely silly. I did the MSN premium thing earlier this year. I would have loved to watch games while I was sitting at a computer lab at school between classes, or with free time at work, or whatever.
So they’re protecting the broadcasters so people watch it on TV…but anyone with a TV feed available would watch that over the crappy quality of the web feed.
I’ve been trying to rattle cages about this silliness for a couple of years and they just don’t care that they make no sense. No one takes responsibility; they simply restate the policy over and over as though that’s a defense and we just don’t understand. I’m in Southern Nevada and I’m blacked out for any game on Extra Innings or mlb.tv that involves any team in Calif. Yeah, that would include Oakland — oh, a tidy little 12-hour drive. Could opening up the restrictions take more fans away from that stadium? Hard to imagine.
They same is true for Houston. We were allowed to watch Houston’s game but blacked out of the 2 west coast games. Ridiculous!
I watched the angels vs A’s game. And I have to say nothing this year makes me happier to see Oakland out of playoff. Now come on Twins, lets beat all the big boys!
Snap playoff call…
NYY over MIN
ANA over BOS
STL over LA
ATL over HOU
ANA over NYY
STL over HOU
STL over ANA
So Atlanta beats Houston, but Houston still makes it to the NLCS? Interesting…
😉
Slip up. My apologes, like I said, it was snap.
The only people who can really benefit from that MSN Premium deal are people outside the US (and thus free of blackouts).
I’m outside the US. MSN won’t sell anything to non-Americans.