Comments on: Bad news for you if you want to watch the Nats or Orioles in North Carolina

By: tacklemeelmo

tacklemeelmo — Wed, 30 May 2012 09:59:04 +0000

Came here to post exactly this. I really dislike Iowa. Potentially blacked out from 12 teams on one night.. Yippee

By: sophiethegreatdane

sophiethegreatdane — Wed, 30 May 2012 00:22:08 +0000

Check your sarcasm detector. It might need fresh batteries.

By: lifer124

lifer124 — Tue, 29 May 2012 23:53:33 +0000

It’s just plain dumb. There are a lot of areas in the country that are in one or multiple team’s “home” area and can’t get the games on MLB.tv and yet they aren’t broadcast in the area either. Iowa is one huge example. I moved to Dubuque from Milwaukee and couldn’t get Brewer games, then discovered that I was in the home area of the Twins, Cubs, Sox, Royals, Brewers, and Cardinals. None of the regular broadcasts for those teams were available on cable, except WGN which would be available anywhere. So if I were a fan of any of those 6 teams, I’d have no way to follow my team. Well, the local radio station carried Cub broadcasts. Being a Brewer fan my whole like, I really enjoyed hearing Ron Santo call a game….

By: recoveringcubsfan

recoveringcubsfan — Tue, 29 May 2012 23:38:51 +0000

Dare I ask: which finger?

By: recoveringcubsfan

recoveringcubsfan — Tue, 29 May 2012 23:37:00 +0000

Well…when I was a kid, the minor league team in Charlotte was the “Charlotte O’s” and a guy named Ripken even played for them once. But, no Orioles’s games on TV, ever. Then, the AA team became the affiliate of the Cubs, then the Indians, then the Sox, and yet we never got any of those games on TV, either. Because, if you’re MLB, you don’t ever, ever want fans of a minor league player to see him in the bigs. Nope.

By: recoveringcubsfan

recoveringcubsfan — Tue, 29 May 2012 23:34:38 +0000

Growing up in the actual Queen City, Charlotte, I was always doubly disgusted by the Reds always being on the radio and the Braves being the only team on TV. Maybe that’s why I watched the Cubs…. Don’t do it, kids!

By: waynespong

waynespong — Tue, 29 May 2012 23:04:16 +0000

I think that the whole idea of using geography to funnel you into a particular team is outdated. I think that if your in North Carolina and you choose to be a Nats fan, a Dodgers fan or a fan of any other team there should be a way to be able to watch that particular pre-game, game and post-game (on one station).

The technology is way beyond this kind of territorial gerrymandering. Welcome to the 21st century, MLB and DirecTV!

By: natstowngreg

natstowngreg — Tue, 29 May 2012 22:59:22 +0000

It’s been quite a few years since MLB teams discovered that, if you broadcast even your home games, more folks will attend the actual home games. Yet they maintain these bizarre blackout rules. Seems to be a disconnect, common sense-wise.

By: natstowngreg

natstowngreg — Tue, 29 May 2012 22:56:22 +0000

That’s the nonsensical thing about Extra Innings (well, one of them). No pre-game and post-game shows. Though Ray Knight on the Nats’ shows can be a little tough to endure sometimes.

By: dowhatifeellike

dowhatifeellike — Tue, 29 May 2012 22:47:04 +0000

I don’t know what controls they have in place, but they seem to end up airing a few of the ads anyway. Sometimes when listening to the radio feed I’ll hear the entire commercial break, uninterrupted. On the computer sometimes I’ll get a 30s commercial before they cut it off. The only time I don’t see any commercials is when watching via Playstation 3, which is the superior viewing method by any measure.

By: mississippimusicman

mississippimusicman — Tue, 29 May 2012 21:53:14 +0000

I apparently live in Braves, Cardinals, and Reds territory, but since I watch my Braves on DVR late at night anyway, it didn’t really bother me to have to wait until 30 minutes after the game is over to watch on mlb.tv the one season I subscribed. That said, it’s still a stupid policy. If MLB would just air the games with the network commercials intact, it seems like this would actually help ad revenue for the networks, so everybody wins. It’s not like those banner and video ads we have to sit through are producing an overwhelming amount of revenue compared to all the additional subscriptions they would land by dropping the blackout restrictions anyway.

By: mrwillie

mrwillie — Tue, 29 May 2012 21:39:15 +0000

With the absolute absurdity of the MLB black out policy already being pretty well covered, what about the absurdity that NC is Nat’s/O’s territory?

Where I am in NC I am 5 hrs from ATL, 5.5 hrs to DC, and well over 6 hrs to Baltimore. So sure, on a map it’s fairly in the middle, but being born and raised in NC this is without a doubt Braves country. I am not saying they’re aren’t some transplants here, and lord knows we have plenty of them, that pull for the Nat’s and O’s…but I can honestly say out of all my baseball lovin’ friends who are from here, not one is a fan of those teams, nor have I ever met one. I’m not knocking them, but the Braves are firmly entrenched here.

So yes, the TV blackout policy is ridiculous, and I feel for the fans missing out, but why on God’s green earth did anyone every agree that this is the Nat’s/O’s TV market to begin with? It should be a non issue.

By: waynespong

waynespong — Tue, 29 May 2012 20:48:40 +0000

I’m in the SW tip of North Carolina and I get the Braves and the Reds. What I want is the Nationals. Directv/MLB treats their customers terrribly imo. I don’t want to watch all the teams on MLB extra innings. What I really want is MASN to watch the Nationals pre-game, the game, and the post-game all on the same channel.

What a novel idea! lol.

By: snowbirdgothic

snowbirdgothic — Tue, 29 May 2012 20:26:05 +0000

Good grief. How many of us North Carolinians are there on here?

By: davidpom50

davidpom50 — Tue, 29 May 2012 20:24:50 +0000

The really frustrating thing is that MLB.tv should be such a GREAT product. MLB Advanced Media does a great job of creating technology solutions, but their draconian use policies make them worthless to many.

By: stultusmagnus

stultusmagnus — Tue, 29 May 2012 20:17:15 +0000

Craig, wasn’t it just a week ago when you were mocking a few blokes who were suing MLB.tv over this sort of thing?

So what’s the problem now?

By: 18thstreet

18thstreet — Tue, 29 May 2012 20:17:13 +0000

I’m pointing the finger at the FCC.

We have a government to prevent this sort of B.S.

The self-interests of actors like MLB and the cable companies do not magically add up to a free market. Hey Ayn Rand: Go screw yourself.

By: terpintriangle

terpintriangle — Tue, 29 May 2012 20:16:10 +0000

I also live in NC, and have to get Directv + the MASN package just to see the Nats at about $80+/month. If the games were not blacked out on MLB.tv, I’d probably ditch pay TV altogether for digital Rabbit ears just for News & Weather. Most of the remaining stuff on TV is garbage, but I’m held hostage here by this system. One day, I might just get the stones to dump this package, and forego my nightly Nats fix if they don’t come up with a more reasonable solution.

By: kmgannon

kmgannon — Tue, 29 May 2012 20:07:51 +0000

I live in Des Moines, where we are the “local” market for (takes deep breath):
The Cubs, White Sox, Twins, Cardinals, and Brewers.

So on the DirectTV extra-innings package, I have to watch those teams’ feeds. And as a Tribe fan, it kills me to have to listen to Hawk Harrelson when my Indians play the southsiders. And if the game is on local Chicago TV, it’s blacked out here. If it’s on local Minneapolis TV, it’s blacked out here, too. I live 6 HOURS from Chicago and 3-1/2 from Miny. I’m 8 hours from Milwaukee, and 7 from St. Louis. And MLB, in its infinite wisdom, has decided I’m in the local viewing area for all of them. Genius.

Yet, I am *not* in the local viewing area for Kansas City, which is the closest of all of these metro regions to my actual locality. Go f**kin’ figure.

By: mJankiewicz

mJankiewicz — Tue, 29 May 2012 19:48:22 +0000

I wish I could do more than one thumbs up.

By: vallewho

vallewho — Tue, 29 May 2012 19:26:11 +0000

Yes, another reason to DISLIKE MLB. The folks running the show are out of touch. Many people are getting rid of cable and some their TVs all together.

I would like to exclusively watch MLB on my PC since I have been paying for MLB.TV for 4 years, but it is terribly frustrating to have to deal with these blackout policies.

Let see, someone wants the product, they buy the product, they get to use the product. It’s really that simple.

By: johnnyb1976

johnnyb1976 — Tue, 29 May 2012 19:22:18 +0000

I can’t figure out the territories and why they are the way they are in NC. Braves are on tv all the time, Reds if you have the alternate sportsouth channell, Nats and O’s if you have direct tv and get MASN, and oh on the very western tip of NC you can watch the Cardinals. Who comes up with this crap, it made my head explode just thinking about it.

By: bnewhard

bnewhard — Tue, 29 May 2012 19:16:31 +0000

As a Rays fan residing in Gainesville, Florida, I used to have this problem all the time because Rays games were not carried locally, but the Rays games were blacked on on mlb.tv. Fortunately, that isn’t a problem anymore since the games are now carried locally.

Anyways, I used to always think there was a perfect market solution to the problem: Have mlb.tv partner up with the tv rights holders/cable companies and let individuals in blacked out markets subscribe to local teams. My understanding is that the rights holders are the ones pushing for black outs. I understand this, because in theory, the rights holders/cable companies want people to watch the games on tv. Surely there’s a way to divy out the subscription cash between rights holders/cable companies/teams so that everyone comes out ahead. But, apparently, the Yankees did something like that at one point in NYC, and it wasn’t that successful: http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2009/11/Issue-41/Sports-Media/Yankees-Online-Streaming-Effort-Drew-About-6000-Subs-This-Year.aspx.

By: gammagammahey

gammagammahey — Tue, 29 May 2012 19:13:26 +0000

“I just don’t understand the mlb.tv blackouts in general. If you live in your team’s area, why would you want to pay extra when you can just turn on your tv?”

Not everyone chooses to subscribe to a cable TV package and sports is a huge selling point for a lot of cable providers. If I could get all of the Mets games via mlb.tv, I wouldn’t bother with the $70+/month in cable fees. MLB needs to preserver the old system of cable providers paying the regional sports networks to carry their channels in order to keep up the price of those lucrative contracts that those networks pay the teams.

By: mJankiewicz

mJankiewicz — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:47:16 +0000

This problem has been such a nuisance for me since i moved to Charlotte, NC from Bethlehem, PA 5 years ago. I’ve had either Extra Innings with Time Warner, or MLB.TV every year and I still miss out on a lot of Phillies games. What really sucks on top of no Nats and O’s games being televised, we’re also blacked out of Reds and Braves games. Most of the Braves games are on TV, but we hardly get any Reds games. We also get WGN Chicago, so we get some Cubs games but we’re not blacked out of those… the whole thing is really confusing and frustrating. I saw another article on Grantland about this a few weeks ago. It’s good to see this issue get some national play. Maybe something will be done about it.

By: psuravens19

psuravens19 — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:46:22 +0000

Maybe some fans watch their team even when they are losing…. what a concept.

By: heyblueyoustink

heyblueyoustink — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:32:17 +0000

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=IMAGE+DOUBLE+FACE+PALM&view=detail&id=D9EF849B77D550B1D8901B331F7237D3C0C1F090&first=0

Double face palm

By: mj1818

mj1818 — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:26:18 +0000

They tell you to purchase their package, but some of the games get blacked out no matter what. If I pay for something I want the choice of bein able to watch it, this the United States, right?

By: skyjo

skyjo — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:11:26 +0000

Never forget: the entire state of Iowa is in the blackout area of each of the six nearest teams.

By: mcsnide

mcsnide — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:06:10 +0000

I’m with you. Just run the commercials and call it good. It amazes me that I can use a product called mlb.TV to listen to the radio call of the local game, but not see the video. How that makes sense, I’ll never know.