ESPN bitter, TBS whiffs
points out Neil Best’s Newsday blog that says ESPN’s reluctance to promote postseason baseball games on TBS has been resolved. ESPN and MLB had been in a spat over the sports network’s refusal to acknowledge that LDS games — which ESPN had carried since their 1995 inception — would be shifting over the TBS this season. MLB responded by threatening to not allow ESPN shoulder programming such as Baseball Tonight to broadcast from postseason locales.
According to Best, an ESPN staff e-mail read, “We have to be very detailed on this because ‘one mistake’ and we’re done.”
For his part, Chris Berman, who for better or worse was an integral part of the ESPN broadcasts, sounded a little down about not having to work the games when we caught up with him last night at Fenway Park.
As for TBS, they’re getting skewered for their relentless promotion for “Frank TV” during last night’s docket of games. They’re just happy in Colorado that Don Orsillo and Joe Simpson are getting the names right now. Red Sox fans might be indifferent, but it’s not the disaster that was The Baseball Network. And it’s not McCarver.
Yet.
If you don’t think ESPN’s need to tell people where the games can be seen is a big deal, think again. More than a few readers wrote in on Tuesday up in arms over why Monday night’s playoff game wasn’t on TV. In fact, go to TBS.com to see all the mentions of playoff baseball on the homepage.
The Office. Yes. Family Guy. Yes. House of Payne. You bet.
Baseball’s presence on the page is relegated to three lines on the bottom right, promoting only tonight’s Cubs-Diamondbacks game at 10. Nowhere is there mention of today’s Indians-Yankees or Rockies-Phillies games.
Paying millions for the games and making sure that nobody knows where they can watch them? Very funny indeed.
