The Light at the End of the Tunnel

The summer season... Like hell! Shameless promotion of reruns is more like it. At least they are running them in the correct order.

This leads me to another question I know that Kelly and I hold near and dear to our heart. If they are going to run nothing but reruns all summer, why not run new Boston Legal episodes? Why wait until September when the show will have to fight with other first run programs when you could run it now when it would be the only fresh show on. It would amass an audience just because it wasn't a rerun, then you could carry those loyal viewers into the real new season.

Furthermore, I would like to talk about how you can not watch a baseball game unless you have cable. If you rely on broadcast tv to watch baseball and live outside a team market, you can get exactly one game a week, and then only after the NBA regular season ends. I am aware that most people have some sort of pay-tv nowadays, but even so, most people aren't going to buy the season packages to watch a few games a month. What is happening is the game is losing its working class roots and it's casual fan.

Where I live, I can watch all the Braves and Cubs games I could stand to watch, as well as Tuesday night and Sunday night baseball on ESPN and the Saturday game on fox. On average I can see roughly 15 games a week. If I didn't have pay-tv, I could see one.

Not to mention the absolute absence of baseball on the radio.... Nothing... I need a clear night in the spring or summer to get ESPN radio, much less a broadcast game. So, no wonder your fan base is shrinking, you aren't making the game accessible.

The NFL offers the season packages as well, but all their games are broadcast. If you live inside a market, you are guaranteed at least 3 games a week with or without pay-tv. If you are outside a market, or your team had a bye week, you get at least 4 if not 5. With pay-tv you get another game, guaranteed. That is, until the College regular season ends, then you get more.

SO lets compare, Excluding the playoffs and pre-season:

Baseball season is roughly 24 weeks long.... 24 weeks X 1 game a week = 24 games
Football season is exactly 18 weeks long..... 18 weeks X 3 games a week = 48 games.

Ok Mr. Selig, lets do some math (poorly, I know). 30 NFL teams x16 games=480 games, giving the viewer a chance to see 10% of the games. (It will be more as I know that it is a diminishing return thing). 30 baseball teams X 162 games = 4860 games, giving the viewer a change to see .5% of the games.


I love baseball, but what is the national pastime again?