At the age of 10 in 1965, I got my first job – selling copies of the Pittsburgh Press – I got to keep 1.5 cents for each copy I sold.\u00a0\u00a0 Many people were interested in reading about the baseball races.<\/p>\n
In the early 1960s, Radio and Baseball had a marriage made in heaven. transistor radios had arrived. People could go to Forbes Field and listen to Bob Prince announce “you can kiss that baby goodbye!” as Roberto Clemente lobbed another home run over the wall in the short right field fence. Half the city had KDKA-AM tuned on their radio.<\/p>\n
Major League Baseball considered TV to be a danger to its franchises – making the same mistake it made with radio 35 years earlier. Only a few games were on TV. The cost of transmitting TV signals from a remote city was significant – so most TV coverage was from the networks, and if the network was covering a home game, the game was blacked out. The thinking was that if people could watch the game from home, they wouldn’t come to the game and attend Iron City Beer Night.<\/p>\n
Baseball had two leagues. The team that won the most games went to the World Series. In the event two teams won the same number of games, one extra game was played to decide the League Champion.<\/p>\n
The World Series started around October 1st – a best of 7 series 2-3-2 with a travel day in between. Baseball was done by October 10th at the latest, way before any chance for snow.<\/p>\n
Then TV showed up with a big checkbook. Umpires needed to be aware of TV commercial breaks, satellite and other costs made it cheaper to show games in another city.\u00a0 The central field camera became a way to see the catcher’s signals.<\/p>\n
Splitting the leagues into divisions meant more teams in more cities. The division championship series meant more games and more postseason revenue. People tend to lose interest once their team is “out” for the year.<\/p>\n
If 2 divisions was good, 3 is even better. Now we can have division series with 8 teams, division championships with 4 teams and the World Series with the final two – with the final game on October 27th.<\/p>\n
SO, the point of this trip down memory lane is to remind you that the regular season is wrapping up. Baseball games will be on almost every day in October. ESPN Radio owns the post season broadcast rights, so you won’t find a lot of post season preemptions in radio. The teams that haven’t been eliminated will still have local coverage (that they can’t stream)<\/p>\n
MLB is making the same mistake the third time – they view streaming of their games by radio stations as a competitive danger to their paid streaming service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the age of 10 in 1965, I got my first job – selling copies of the Pittsburgh Press – I got to keep 1.5 cents for each copy I sold.\u00a0\u00a0 Many people were interested in reading about the baseball … Continue reading