Posted on 05/26/2014 6:14:21 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Beckett can be (is) an a**hole, but there’s no denying what he’s done and apparently still can do. The way he shoved the bat up the Yankee’s a** in 2003 is still one of the best pitching performances you’ll see.
Good explanation of the absolutely bizarre MLB blackout rules:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2870960
...”Can anyone think of a good or service other than MLB, where customers chase a vendor around with $, yet the vendor goes to such great lengths to restrict the distribution of its own product?”...
Who owns TWC? Ted Turner? He’s a jerk for this.
Even if he doesn’t own it he’s still a jerk.
It’s an MLB deal.
They actually turn down money from individual fans who want to watch broadcasts, instead counting on disgruntled fans to pressure their local cable/sat to pay for MLB regional networks.
The result? A lot of locations are blacked out from multiple teams that are hundreds or even thousands of miles away, even if they’re willing to pay for them.
The real intent is to promote teams like Yankees at the expense of ‘smaller markets’.
Dodgers were 6 outs away from a perfect game last I heard
I watched it on my MLB TV app.
You can get the MLB Extra Innings package and get any game you like.
Well, here’s what Directv says about that:
...If you live in a ZIP code that is within a Major League Baseball team’s territory, that team’s games will be blacked out from the MLB EXTRA INNINGS® game package, but will generally be available as part of your local regional sports, cable or over–the–air affiliate station. Blackouts protect the local rights holders who arrange separate distribution agreements for their exclusive territories.
In addition, because of the national exclusivity of both ESPN and FOX, there are no games available for distribution via this package on Saturday during the day or Sunday at night...
Same situation happens to a friend of mine. She lives in the Dallas area, pays for the MLB Extra Innings package on DirecTV, and has every Houston Astros game blacked out. And the Astros games are not even broadcast on her regional sports networks. Only Texas Rangers games are shown on the regional sports networks in her area.
Is there more rationality to hockey viewing?
All sports have similar blackout policies. I signed up for the NHL Gamecenter Live package one year and found out that due to my area I was blacked out from watching any NY Rangers, NY Islanders, NJ Devils, and Buffalo Sabres games.
Very little. For example, Milwaukee is in the Minnesota Wild territory, even though we are only 80 miles from the Blackhawks arena.
At least we get Wild games on our regional network, but no one cares. Every NHL fan I know in the Milwaukee area is either an Blackhawks or Redwings fan. No one cares about the Wild.
Sounds nuts and therefore believable. I couldn’t get games for months once Big Cable had bought our local utility.
Yikes. It happens everywhere, I guess. It still seems arbitrary and senseless.
I used to work with Josh Beckett’s dad years ago. That kid could throw the baseball very well back then. His dad invited me to a couple of HS games, but I always had conflicts.
I’m the wrong guy to ask. Here in the NYC market we have three different NHL teams and they all play on cable stations with the same parent company. I couldn’t even begin to explain how they assign games to the different variations of MSG. LOL.
I hve Extra Innings. I get pretty much every game. The only thing I can’t get is the other team’s broadcast of a local game. (I even get our local broadcasts in the Extra Innings channels.)
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