Saturday, May 30, 2009

MLB's TV Partners Prohibits You From Seeing The Last Two World Series Champions Play Each Other...Unless You Have Cash Monies, Homie

There are assholes, and then there are TV programmers. Both seem to have their heads up their arrears at the same time. Take for example, the folks at TBS, ESPN, FOX and MLB Network.

Please.

On the weekend of June 12th through June 14th, the last two teams that won the World Series - the Boston Red Sox (2007) and the Philadelphia Phillies (2008) - will be playing a three-game series at Citizens Bank Park. Guess how many games will be telvised on one of those networks.

None. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Bubkus.

That's right. None of them. So, what games will be on national television that weekend? Let's check the schedules, kids.
  • FOX June 13 - New York Mets at New York Yankees or St. Louis Cardinals at Cleveland Indians, 4 PM ET.
  • MLB Network June 13 - San Diego Padres at Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Orange County California USA Western Hemisphere Third Rock From the Sun Milky Way Galaxy Crab Nebula, 9 PM ET.
  • TBS June 14 - New York Mets at New York Yankees, 1 PM ET (Headline News in New York City area).
  • ESPN June 14 - St. Louis Cardinals at Cleveland Indians, 8 PM ET.
I can possibly understand the Mets-Yankees thing, but the last place Cleveland Fucking Indians and the last place San Diego Motherfucking Padres? Can someone have these prickheads take a damn cocksucking drug test to see what they were eating/drinking/smoking when they made these decisions? The die was cast a week earlier when ESPN decided to put the Phillies-Dodgers NLCS rematch for that week's Sunday Night Baseball telecast on June 7th. As far as I'm concrened, the Cardinals-Indians game was better off on KSDK in St. Louis and WKYC in Cleveland, thus in turn, pissing off those at NBC.

Sadly, the greedy motherfucking bastards at Major League Baseball will make these games available because as Ted DiBiase the elder says "Everybody's got a price...Everybody's gonna pay...'Cause [MLB]...Always gets [their] way." Those games (except in New England and the Valley of the Delaware) are readily available via their Extra Innings digital cable/DirecTV package or via the internet on MLB.tv. The sadder part? DirecTV doesn't carry Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia thanks to an obscurely antiquated FCC rule about exclusivtivity and Comcast's preferrence to use microwave/fiber optics.

So I give a great big loud FUCK YOU to TimeWarner, NewsCorpse and Disney as well as MLB's in house TV operations for this gigantic pile of bullshit. You made your beds, now the fans outside New England and Philadelphia expect you to lay there, you cocksucking assholes.

3 comments:

  1. My family also subscribes to basic Comcast cable for the sole purpose of watching the Phillies, Flyers, and occasionally the Sixers (my brother is much more of a Sixers fan than I am). But yeah, Comcast can pretty much fuck themselves. I hate them with the burning passion of 10,000 suns.

    And the thing is though with the games this weekend is that it's not like they are going the more admirable route and airing some of the smaller market teams that are doing well this year. That I could understand. But it's the same big market teams that always get on TV. And you'd think that Phillies-Sawx would be the series that most casual fans would want to see aside from Mets-Yankees. How ESPN can air St. Louis-Cleveland on SNB on the same weekend as Phils-Sawx and Mets-Yankees is beyond me. And it's not a big market bias here, it's two games with 4 good teams versus a match up of two teams that we know are not going to do anything this year. I guess that is what happens when ESPN schedules everything in advance. And maybe this is a biased assessment, and you might agree with this, but despite being a huge baseball market, the Phillies get absolutely no respect from the national media and the national TV outlets. It's incredible. Really. And as further proof that Philly is a big baseball market, look at last night's game against. The Phillies, who have been mediocre at best at home this year, sold out Citizens Bank Park for a game against the EFFING NATINALS!!!

    And it's actually funny that you should mention the Phils-Sawx series because I am going to the game on Sunday the 14th at 1:35. The first time I've gone to a Phils game since Barry Bonds was chasing Hank Aaron and the Giants were in town. This will be my first of 2 games this year (the other is a Mets game in September). I am indeed looking forward to it, although I have not tried to calculate who is pitching yet.

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  2. First, apologies for the language. Someone has to say something about this. And second, I'm smelling some Midwest media bias there with this.

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  3. No need to apologize to me. I cuss in my blog when I'm angry pretty much all the time.

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