…but he might’ve had a soft spot for The U-Men.
With apologies to Repoz, the following is from Yahoo’s Jeff Passan.
Even the commissioner of baseball isn’t immune to the sport’s television blackout rules.
Bud Selig admitted Tuesday that he has been restricted from watching some games this season “ and that he intends to change the policy that leaves some cities without as many as six baseball games each night.
“I don’t understand (blackouts) myself,” Selig said at a luncheon with the Baseball Writers Association of America. “I get blacked out from some games.”
While he did not outline a plan, Selig said he had spoken with Major League Baseball about addressing the blackout issue.
“Right now,” he said, “I don’t know what to do about it. We’ll figure it out.”
More than 1,000 fans emailed Yahoo! Sports to voice their frustration with baseball’s territorial-rights rules that black out games on the Extra Innings pay-per-view package and MLB.TV. The rules, developed about 40 years ago to protect teams’ marketing areas, have fallen woefully out of date with a sport able to televise every game.
Instead, fans in Las Vegas cannot watch the Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Angels, Oakland Athletics, San Francisco Giants, San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks. And no one in Iowa can watch the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, St. Louis Cardinals, Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins and Kansas City Royals. And so on, all across the country.
In protest, fans have mobilized to send Selig letters of complaint. They seem to have finally found an advocate in the commissioner.
“I hear more about people who can’t get the game,” Selig said, “and, yes, I’ve already told our people we have to do something about it.”
Despite being 4 hours away from Houston or Arlington, Astros and Rangers games are regularly restricted from MLB.com viewing at Chez CSTB. Of course, it would be kind of neat if the crew Selig has working on the HGH test ended up solving the blackout issue, while the folks at MLB.com’s tech support department were put in charge of human growth hormone testing. For a while, anyway.
Ah, so it’s Texas. I figured CTSB was from L.A. given the slant in the articles.
at least I made more sense that that guy
As a confused Brit, I need help: how come NESN can broadcast Sox games throughout New England? Is it because they are partially owned by the Red Sox? Or are they? I’m genuinely confused, and would rather someone here explained it rather than me having to wade through MLB’s blackout rules. Ta.
These rules don’t bother me as much as the exclusivity granted to the Fox network for Saturday regional telecasts. I live in Cubs/Sox country, but am an Angels fan. I don’t wanna watch the Cubs or Sox, and blacking out all other games on Saturday afternoons isn’t going to want to make me watch them any more than I already don’t. I seriously doubt that if those games were available on EI that the regional telecast would do significantly worse in terms of ratings. Fuckers.