Why Saturday’s game isn’t televised

DMZ · July 25, 2009 at 12:14 am · Filed Under Mariners 

I thought I’d share (with permission) this from the M’s Tim Hevly, sent the last time this happened:

MLB has an exclusive Saturday afternoon “window” for FOX TV. If your game is schedule in the FOX window (basically, 1 pm pacific on Saturdays) no local broadcast is allowed.

Since the A’s chose to play a day game today, once FOX did not pick up the game neither the A’s or the Mariners could televise it. We can televise morning games from the east (10 am pacific) and late afternoon/evening games from the West on Saturday. But not the middle.

As you know, currently FSN will televise 158 games this season, and the national partner is on board for 1 game (they could add more later). The only other games currently not scheduled to be broadcast are July 25 vs. CLE and Oct. 3 vs. TEX.

Tags:

Comments

10 Responses to “Why Saturday’s game isn’t televised”

  1. henryv on July 25th, 2009 1:38 am

    I think this is one of the “You’d probably be happier if you didn’t know the reason an just accepted it” things.

    Maybe its just me.

  2. matthew on July 25th, 2009 4:11 am

    I would go to the game but I’ll be recovering from being in a food coma at about that time.

    Thanks for letting us know. It’ll give me incentive to set up the AM radio on my receiver.

    Hopefully October 3rd will be so important that it will be carried by someone…

  3. Soonerman22 on July 25th, 2009 7:31 am

    Here is hoping for an all west coast ALCS and NLCS to remind national media there are other teams in the league besides the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Mets, and the Cubs.

  4. joser on July 25th, 2009 8:33 am

    And, just to complete the coverage on the clusterfuck that is downtown Seattle today, per Baker:

    The Mariners scheduled the game in the afternoon at the behest of the City of Seattle, because the annual Seafair Torchlight Parade (and run) will be held that evening. The Sounders announced their schedule several months after the Mariners’ released their 2009 schedule. The Sounders’ noon start was set by Major League Soccer because the game is being televised by ESPN.

    Once they found out about the Sounders game, the Mariners asked the city if they wanted the M’s to change their start time, but the city requested that the Mariners leave it at 1 p.m because of the Torchlight events.

    Well, hey, at least we now have working light rail in the tunnel to ease the congestion…. wait, what?

  5. Breadbaker on July 25th, 2009 9:09 am

    I’m sure you’re right, because the inanity of the FOX afternoon exclusive is well-known. But they did put on the DiamondVision last night that the next game was today on FSN.

  6. IP on July 25th, 2009 9:59 am

    Oh goody, another reason to hate Fox.

  7. Techno_Viking- on July 25th, 2009 10:55 am

    Oh goody! Time for the awkward radio on my tv thing. One of the few times i actually get to experience what it’s like to be blind…

  8. joser on July 25th, 2009 11:52 am

    Actually, it’s kind of fun to multi-task. Turn on the Fox game but mute the TV. Then simultaneously listen to the M’s on the radio. I’ve done this a few Saturdays in the past. I’m sure it would drive some people batty, but it can create hilarious situations when Niehaus is calling something on the radio at the same moment something completely different is happening on the TV (unfortunately, sometimes that happens just watching an M’s game these days).

    In my high school years we used to play loud music and then switch channels on a muted TV in time to create extemporaneous music videos. And it sometimes worked even for those of us who weren’t stoned.

    More seriously, I follow a lot of games on the radio. One of the nice things about baseball (vs some other sports like football and hockey) is that it’s possible and even quite easy to get a good sense of the game just from the audio play-by-play, allowing you to do other things at the same time. You do miss some of the great catches and other amazing plays, but you can often see at least the best of those on the local news later in the day.

  9. Breadbaker on July 25th, 2009 1:46 pm

    Muting the TV on FOX national broadcasts is never a problem. They have very few announcers worth listening to.

  10. scott19 on July 25th, 2009 6:49 pm

    Here is hoping for an all west coast ALCS and NLCS to remind national media there are other teams in the league besides the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Mets, and the Cubs.

    Though, unfortunately, that’s likely to include the Angels this year — which is yet another one of Faux’s “darling” teams that they love to jam down everybody’s throat every chance they get.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.