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Major League Baseball Releases Webcasting Plans
TopShelf writes "With spring in the air, it's time to discuss the (US) national pastime. According to this story at CNN, Major League Baseball is planning to webcast 1,000 games this season. The interesting part is that in order not to violate TV blackout rules, they'll try to deny service to viewers who instead have local broadcasts available, using Quova's user-location service. At last, an opportunity to see my hometown Detroit Tigers more than once a year!"
I wonder how they will deal with viewers via proxy?
I like to build things and wire stuff together.
From the article:
At last, an opportunity to see my hometown Detroit Tigers more than once a year!
Why on earth would you want to do that?
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
Blooming, blithering, drivelling, sputtering, drooling morons. But this is what we have come to expect from Bud Selig, unfortunately.
sulli
RTFJ.
As if anyone on Slashdot likes sports!
...posted with the expressed, written conscent nor implied oral conscent of major league baseball. Cease and desist!
why run from Vincenzo?
all we need is little foil hats and they wont be able to read our thoughts to see where we are.... they have satellites you know.
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
Sounds like a resonable comprimise. I wonder if the Olympics will follow suit?
Posting AC because this will be modded as off-topic, even though the topic is Major League Baseball and their electronic assets.
Has anyone lost interest in baseball? I mean, what a bunch of babies. They strike in what, 1995, nearly killing baseball off, but managed to recover thanks to the homerun battles of Sosa and Mac. Then, these pussies go whining about it again. Boo hoo, you don't want a salary cap, and want to raise the minimum wages, etc etc...
Thanks Bud for allowing us to listen/watch to MLB on the internet, but I for one, have become put off by all that is going on in baseball these days. Especially you Bud Selig (sp?), why wouldn't you let them play in the all star game? That's just wrong, even when the players still wanted to play. Baseball is 9+ innings, not 7.
Anyone else put off by baseball lately?
Bart: "See, I told you Major League Baseball was spying on me!"
McGuire:"Do you people want answers, or do you want to see me hit some zingers?"
Crowd: "Zingers!"
I have a pot next to my chair I can piss into. No leaving the computer for me!
u r t3h f4660r+
It's a real message I promise, and on topic: Babe ruth is the greatest, unlike this schmuck.
If the user-location service proves ineffective, what will the MLB do?
Speculation welcome
Unless they break away to commercials between innings, I'm not interested.
Being bombarded by ads (either at home or at the game) has become as much a part of the beloved pasttime as the game itself.
If they're not gonna let me be a part of that, then NO THANKS!
mlb.com They have a java aplett or something that shows a baseball diamond, who's up, The score/ pitch count of every game. During the playoffs They were showing where each pitch was (With a box for the strike zone.)
Its pretty incredible. Baseball is a very data intensive sport
th4t m3ss4ge is so incredibly offtopic that it would not surprise me if a crusty-wanged pirate had written it. It totally makes me want to flip out.
Like MLB has any clue about good faith or social responsibility. It is all about not getting sued for $$$'s.
I have forgotten about da Chronic.. I think I got the CD around here somewhere.
"Ya know dee?"
"Who?"
"DEEZ NUTZZZZZZ"
Good idea, but I think the astronauts have a bag that attaches to their schlongs so they don't have to get out of their space suit. They don't even have to aim, they just go.
I wonder what intern at NASA had to design/test that piece of equipment.
"You know, I never realized how boring this game is." --Homer
Does anyone know exactly how Quova works?
Why exactly are they only broadcasting half the games, even with the national broadcast restrictions there should be a lot more games being broadcast.
u r t3h p1r4+3, bu++ p1r4+3
Dimaggio doesn't play football, sucka.
And it does not work on my linux box. Real Player just gives "General Error" with no other info.
- Back off man. I am a scientist
They make you pay a lot for it, and then won't let you watch local games? Not only that, but any time that there is a nationally broadcast game on ESPN, you can't watch any online games.
How many people do they hope to sign up for this?
between watching a live-web-stats broadcast (like we had to do when EE lab was during the world series) and actually watching the game live.
Heck, listening to an animated announcer on the radio is better than seeing this slowly appear on your computer screen:
Bottom of the 9th.... 2 outs.
Jeter... takes ball 3, full count.
Jeter: tripple. 3 runs in.
Score: 7-7
Years ago, the individual radio stations apparently owned the rights to the audio of baseball games, and I listened to them directly from their web site, for free (and heard the local commercials, too...) Then, I think it was about two or three years ago, MLB "found" the Internet and decided it should control all audio broadcasts. Of course, by "control", I mean "Charge $10/yr for what used to be free.".
Last year, they raised the subscription fee to $12/yr. This year, they are apparently raising it to $19.95/yr. And after all that, they still have the local commercials! The commercials are supposedly paying for the broadcast, can't they have them pay for the Internet broadcast too?
I understand that if they provided the service for free, there would be a lot more people using it, and bandwidth isn't free. But did bandwidth costs really go up 100% in the past two or three years? If not, I think a more likely explanation is that Baseball (indeed, all sports) are filled with greedy owners, spoiled players, and weak executives, and that the cost of being a fan will shortly get prohibitive for most people.
At last, an opportunity to see my hometown Detroit Tigers more than once a year!"
Isn't that more like a form of punishment?
What is music when you despise all sound?
Baseball is 9 innings
NOT 7!!!!!!!
Why would I want to watch a baseball game streamed and compressed on a computer monitor when I could watch it in far better quality on my television? I mean, for the games that aren't shown locally, that'd be cool. But the rest? I can't imagine there would be demand to cheat the system...
Philip Sandifer's academic website
Slightly OT: the major league baseball's website http://mlb.com redirects you to "http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/homepage/mlb_ho mepage.jsp" ! Can you beat that? I've seen this on a web design hall of shame ;^)
My friend and I were playing this song in his Jeep one time... ya know, just laughing at it cause it was so silly. Well, we were listening to it, and drove past a bunch of black guys... well they didn't like it, and looked over at us with the WTF-face.
That's the fastest I think I've ever seen a Jeep Wrangler accelerate from the stoplight.
The first radio broadcasts were essentially faked...the announcer was not at the park. He had someone relay him the bare facts over the phone, and he would add color commentary according to his imagination and experience with the game. Radio listeners thought he was at the game, and followed every word. This proved to be a hit, and broadcasters were eventually allowed to be inside the park for live action commentary.
What does this have to do with broadbandcasts? Wait and see what content actually shows up on the net... Is it real, or is it Memorex?
I am at work, and afraid to click on that link. I take the same caution as I did with goat.se, never click, but wait for someone to explain what's at the other end. (even at home now that i know what it is, i won't click goat.se)
Is TubGirl legit? Or something I definately don't want to be clicking on?
you actually have niggers in your country??
Considering a huge amount of traffic will appears to come from Virginia (AOL's big ass proxy) it's funny that there's no local team to block.
once a year is one time too many. I have better ways to spend my time. Is there a webcast of paint drying somewhere I could watch instead?
"You get what you pay for after all." --
Is it really worth watching the Tigers?
Modern baseball tends to get boring. Over expansion has dilluted the talent pool so badly that (for example) pitchers who *might* have made the big leagues twenty years ago as part time relievers are now full time, middle rotation starters. Boring, home-run derby ball.
If they really wanted to churn up a buck they could make available radio broadcasts of 'old time' games. Even better, make them freely available as a move to generate interest in the sport. Think of the benefits and possibilities.
One, you've got MASSIVE amounts of content. IF you got back to the pre-WW2 era you're looking at 20+ clubs playing over 144 games per year. You've games from hall of famers like mickey mantle, ted williams, or jackie robinson playing. This could introduce a younger audience to people they've only heard stories about.
Two, Niche markets and fan base expansion. I live in michigan and have been stuck with the piss poor tigers. Yet, I'm a big fan of the cubs thanks to having WGN tv. Image being able to equally expose all 32 teams in all markets. Long term you could see an overall rise in attendance (fans going to their local park to see their favorite out of state team).
As for niche markets, I'm also brooklyn dodgers fan. The team moved out of new york around the time my father was born. Yet I'd love to sit back on a summer day, and listen to a brooklyn dodgers game. I can't be the only one like this.
Third, and finally, Color. Listening to a game today sounds boring. Most teams have radio annoucers with communications degrees. They call baseball games until they can get a job as news casters. In the 'good old days' you had guys like Harry Carey, or Ernie Harwall who made the most boring baseball game a work of art. There's a great oral history and tradition in baseball. Most of it is lost on guys now. Those intersting, non sequitor stories than a broadcaster can tell during a dull game are what separate the good color men from the bad. think of the stories that are sitting in a vault rusting away right now.
An added benefit of making the old school games available is that you'd have to transfer them off of whatever media they're stored on now (probably steel wire or even wax in some cases, certainly magentic tape for the majority of games) is that you preserve the games for the ages.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Is on "one free beer for everybody in the stands per player who tests positive for steroids night".
I'd be more than happy to send you digital copies of the Detroit Tigers games, if you supply me with the hardware to get it into one of my Linux boxes. :-)
Of course, watching a Detroit Tigers game probably isn't going to be all that interesting, though with Trammel, Parrish, and Gibson behind the scenes now, it should at least be better than the last few seasons! All we need is Mr. Sweet Lou Whitaker back.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Wow, I can't wait for this. I've bought the audio package ($15/year) the last couple of years so I could hear Expos games, which don't get much coverage, even here in Canada (no wonder they're having a hard time staying around, the Toronto-centered Canadian media doesn't even acknoledge their existence)
Anyway, even if they're only around for one more year, it will be great to see a few of their games now and then.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Somehow, beer and hot dogs are just not the same while sitting in front of the computer. And won't you feel like an idiot singing by yourself during the seventh inning stretch? Then again, at least my computer chair isn't sticky and parking is free at my house.
IAAL
true - mod this up
So, between fall 2000 and fall 2001, this American was living in Ireland. As a NY Mets fan, I was addicted to watching the game on espn.com and listening via webcasts.
Then the trouble began. About a month into the season, it just stopped working. I talked with the SysAdmin at the Irish University I was at (DCU), and nothing had changed with the ports/firewalls/whatever.
Clearly something changed at MLB. I emailed all the different addresses I could come up with, and didn't get a single human reply. They had no problem charging me $10 (advertised $9.95, but they threw in a nickel for "shipping" -- don't get me started on that one), but they never fixed the problem, addressed it, or offered me a refund.
So, I wouldn't buy the service. They screwed me over by (a) not fixing the service when it stopped working, (b) overcharging me for their service, and (c) having the balls to charge for shipping a streamed audio over the Internet.
Screw them.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Almost right on target. Webcasting would not devalue the broadcasting rights, but does violate them. Each team "owns" the broadcasting rights to their home games. That's a LOT of money. The Yankee Corporation get about $1/month for every person subscribed to their basic cable channel, Yankee Entertainment System (YES). MLB cannot broadcast a competing product without violating their contract, EVEN THOUGH IT'S CHEAPER TO WATCH IT ON CABLE. That is, very few people will watch the Yanks in NYC via the MLB webcast, but MLB has to make some effort to insure YES that they are not undercutting them. It's the appearance of preserving the rights of individual teams rather than appear as a "rival" to them.
All advertising will probably be blacked out or replaced with a "filler" screen so there is no legal problems from that end.
The big losers for this will people who would like to watch the game from work within the "banned" radius. The internet radio version of this was great for people trapped in buildings with no reception. Too bad the MLB got involved and let their lawyers loose on the "implications."
"I may be Love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."
For a long time, not one of the three teams in New York (the Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants, of course) would allow radio broadcasts because they were afraid that radio would damage the ticket sales.
The toughest part about watching Tigers game is knowing that the payroll from last year opening day was about $55,000,000. The Red Wings, the greatest team on the planet, has a payroll of $66,085,756 (as of Feb 14th). Hopefully Tram can turn things around.
The technology is there for people to broadcast Max Headroom-style (or maybe Gargoyle-style) 1st-person singular video accounts of things like -- for instance -- baseball games, complete with commentary, stats and mugshots gathered instantly from Google, overlaid local weather conditions scraped from the Weather Underground ... (Why don't more notebooks have built-in video cameras? Seems an idea worth having other than as a novelty.) Right now, the effect (if done in near-real time on a middle-class budget) would be a lot like the old Quicktime postage stamp movies, since the Good Stuff in the way of cameras, mics, editing programs and the requisite computer platform would cost way too much to look professional, but look 3 and 10 years down the road ...
... Solaris? Bueller?). Fine print (maybe a placard you walk past in line on the way into the ballpark, or on the ticket you buy) that says you can't even narrate over a cell phone to a friend what you're seeing from the stadium seats. No contract, though there is (arguably meaningful) consent: you could decide not to attend the game, or not to buy the DVD, etc. The music industry doesn't want you to rip your CDs and listen to them other than from the original media, Jamie Kellner doesn't want you skipping commercials, etc etc ;)
... maybe soon DVDs really *will* carry a shrinkwrap license that says by purchasing you agree not to play the contained movie except on sanctioned equipment. [I'm not talking about re-selling unauthorized copies or arranging free local showings for admissions -- just *watching* them, say, on a computer running Debian.] CDs would carry licenses that say "This product may only legally be played three times before self-destructing. Attempts to prolong the life of the music it contains is a prosecutable offense under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Bummer about fair use, ha ha."
However, it's a bit like buying a DVD (and finding no legal way at present -- someone correct me if that's no longer true -- to view its content on other than an annointed operating system (Mac OS or OS X, Windows
What's worse than the present situation (where so many hidden and esoteric rules hold sway) is even worse to my mind: I forsee an increasing flood of fine-print, sir-don't-worry-about-these-technicalities, but BOY do we have some technicalities to go through before you can eat here / walk through the museum / sketch trees in the park / take note of the fine and copyrighted smells in our greenhouse. More formal "licenses" not just on software, but everywhere, minor Gotchas which don't just prohibit illegal for-profit exploitation of copyrighted works, but ever more of the *normal* things which common sense currently holds to be among the rights of customers
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
IMO the MLB tv blackout rules are an anachronism of a bygone era.
Besides preventing national broadcasts from competing with local broadcasts (which is arguably a "good thing") they also force fans who live outside the broadcast/must-carry range of the local station to pay outrageous Pay Per View charges to watch their favorite team.
If I was a bad citizen, I'd consider modifying my sattellite TV receiver to allow me to get out of market local channels as locals... Not that I would ever do that, of course.
Who did what now?
Makes no sense.
Not all hometown fans can make it to the game - sometimes they have to WORK.
But they would like to watch the game while they work, but they can't, cuz it's blacked out.
Yes, you get less money from a fan watching TV than from a fan at the game, but you annoy your fans who can't get to the game, and you prevent potential new fans from getting interested.
Since we're in different towns, and both signing up for this service, if I proxy it for you and you for me we've both got total coverage. I'm perfectly happy to connect to you for this through ipsec. They'll never know.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Uhh... It's "Dingers".
Zingers are cheap, knock-off twinkies...
Who did what now?
You arent missing anything by not catching the tiger games. I can recap all 182 of their games last year for you - "Tigers Lose" - Copy that into notepad and paste it 181 times and you'll have the 2002 tiger report.
Choose wisely you must...
The CART ChampCar World Series has a really nice feature on their website that lets you watch all their races for free. The catch is that they don't put them up until 5 days after the race is brodcast on CBS or SpeedTV, but it's still nice to be able to actually watch the race for those of us without cable. No ads, either.
It's just really cool to see a sport actually doing sometihng for the fans and not just as a cash grab.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
... next I hope they start doing this for sports.
-pyrrho
Who gives a rip about major league anymore anyway? The games are boring as hell, your tickets cost at least $50, a beer and a brat another $12 or worse...and who only wants one beer at a ballgame. And who could forget the lovely seating for the fans...half a mile from the damn diamond.
You want real damn baseball, you go to your hometown minor league club. Sit right behind homeplate for $6. $3 for a brat and another $2.50 for a great American MACRObrew. None of that microbrew shit where some pretentious nitwit makes comments like "..a deliciously hoppy body and a crisp bite on the tongue. The nose is that of lemon rinds, and the tasting follows through with a light citrus flavor that cleanses and refreshes the palate..." wanker. Cheer when the pitcher beans a batter in the head for the 7th time in the game. Jump in your seat when a popup fly clangs into the roof of the stands. Get pissed drunk. Taunt the other team and listen to them curse. Moon the mascot if there is one. Yell at the kids. Then stagger home. Minor league's all about mom apple pie and america (and beer). Major's about subway series where no matter what New freakin' York wins, corporate greed, and rich assholes on the team, owning the team, and in the good seats. Screw 'em.
However, MLB plans to go on strike after the third game, thus reducing the total number of webcast games.
162 games a piece (for the regular season), and 30 teams gives us 2430 games. So broadcasting 1000 games is about 41%. Not too bad, I'd say.
Since so little actually happens in a baseball game, the compression ratio should be pretty nice, meaning low bandwidth requirements.... cool. :)
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
WWE already webcasts their pay-per-views, and while NASCAR doesn't do webcasts, you can access telemetry from all the cars in the Winston Cup races, and see a ton of real-time data on the races while you watch it on FOX (or ABC later in the season) using their TrackPass site features.
I'm not particularly excited that MLB is doing it. It sounds to me like another desperate ploy to get fans back after they abused us with their "I deserve more money even though I have enough $100 bills lying around to wipe my ass with for the rest of my life" spoiled rich boy player strikes.
Forget baseball -- NASCAR is the new national pastime.
evil adrian
I've always thought that sports such as Baseball and cricket would be the ideal choices to initiate web broadcasts. Mainly because the majority of action takes place on a (relatively) static screen, and so could presumably be reasonably well compressed compared to faster moving games(in terms of both the sport and the camera sweeps used) such as basketball or soccer.
What do we need to do to get around this? Some type of ip swapping/spoofing of other areas? I'm on the east coast, so I'll swap with San Diego fans?
get to work techies, the clock is ticking...
Is baseball even a sport? Watch football & hockey.
Um... are you looking for this?s _best/m lb_bb_home.jsp
http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/baseball
It's part of their "whole shebang package" (not the real name), which i got last year, and recently renewed.
You wax pretty nostalgic for this, but apparently you never went looking for it. It is pretty cool. They have video, too. I watched the Bucky F. Dent game on video a couple of weeks ago when the snow in NYC had me bumming.
Not only that, but this article also stinks.
p orts/53 68622.htm
Check out the link here:
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/s
Most teams will black out all games involving those in a fan's home market. But the Royals are one of three teams who will allow some of the normally blacked-out games to be shown to fans locally.
Why pay for the MLB when the NFL is free?
Sorry, gulp, drink | more beer.
Enjoy
It's just the normal noises in here.
the pga tour and IBM has teamed up on cool thing called Tourcast.
They have 2 lasers per hole to display where on the course each players' ball is within a few centimeters.
moderate this!
If america sucks so much, and europe is what we should be modeling ourselves after, then why, why, why is this article about BASEBALL webcasts instead of SOCCER (er KICKBALL er EUROPEAN FOOTBALL) webcasts. Cause nobody would watch a SOCCER webcast. Nobody in America watches baseball anyways, but its still more popular. And an American football team will beat any Europeeeing Soccer-kickball team at ANYTHING ANYTIME... I always thought it would be cool to see Barry Sanders, Brian Urlacher, Randy Moss etc playing aussie football... they would destroy everybody... IF they tried kickball they would probably destroy everyone just the same...
too bad the dumbass communist moderators cant see the truths in this post, so I guess I better go AC. But the main point is: Baseball gets webcasted. Its like the third most popular sport here in the US. But it gets webcasted cause USA kicks europes ass.... maybe in 20 years or so there will be soccer webcasts... sucks to be a euroPEEan...
I just wanted to point out that you can also get the audio feed for every game in the nation for only $20/season. This isn't as big a deal for local games, but when you're following 22 fantasy players or your home team is on the road for a week, it's money fairly well spent.
The NFL still offers these feeds for free..but I guess $20 isn't too bad for more than a thousand games. And the audio feeds go silent for commercials (since radio commericals are local feeds)...so you only hear the game, which is also a bonus.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
the article mentions that folks in the hometown area have the option of watching the blackout games 90 mins after they end. much better than not being able to watch them at. the system isnt perfect (i want all the games broadcast since the twins dont get the exposure they need, and its not free) but its a step forward. im abroad so it will be nice to see some american baseball again...
...go twins!
philanthropists need to realize there is a need for philanthropy in the first place
I started a new troll trend! I rule! Yeah!
You should check out Hit the Pros http://www.hitthepros.com/ They take pitch telemetry data after each baseball game and drop it into an online 3d video game so you can hit the same pitches that were thrown that night. I think Fox Sports is behind it...
Baseball is fifteen minutes of action packed into three hours.
Can somebody expand on this, or link to a detailed explanation for us Ethnians who lack your fruity laws?
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
,you forgot to mention.
But Mike Shannon and son Joe hopefully will carry on the tradition of a great colorful radio broadcast here in St. Louis with a talent pool of players worthy of World Series contention.
I'm an Expos Fan... Yeah, that's me you see on TV...
That thing means I could, just maybe, watch a game on my computer? What a blast... We just *don't* have games on TV here. None.
The thing is, tickets in the bleachers here in Montreal are 8$ CDN apiece... I think it can go as high as 32$, but at 8$ you're in Right field (or just in line with first base at level 200, wich really isn't very far)... I just don't think they expect to broadcast any Expos games... Too bad...
And people wonder why this team is moving...
I'm kinda curious.... Are baseball live casts tech savvy? For a game like cricket, they have software that analyzes the performance of each player, they have the HAWKEYE - a system with 6 cameras which can predict the motion of the ball in 3d to a precision of 5mm...... do they have technical coverage to such an extent?
Coming to webcasts, why not use a virtual broadcaster? ie a server can covert real-video to basic animation in real time.... which would take up lesser bandwidth. OR, why not conver the movements of each player to simple vectors and plot the ball in real time to have a set of pre-rendered players and ball moving in sync.
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
Seriously, the problem is the contract arrangements described by another poster. You'd think, though, that MLB would find some way to share those eighty dollars a year with the teams.
As for blackout rules on sellouts, you're confusing MLB with the NFL. There, games not sold out are blacked out locally (also a dumbass rule IMHO). In baseball, the local teams get cable contracts & revenue (except the Expos, who need to move to Washington, but I digress).
sulli
RTFJ.
Not a fan of baseball, but i wonder if NBA has any future plans for stuff like this?
Or are they not in financial troubles from strikes and other sh*t?
One word, one syllable: Greed.
The amount of money they get for the season from the local tv deal is in their pocket. It represents an amount that isn't going to change.
Pay-per-view/subscription offerings like MLB Extra Innings from DirecTV represent extra money for the teams from each subscriber. If they didn't black-out out of market games, who would buy this ludicrously overpriced package?
By the way, that price doesn't let you see everything... You get "up to" 35 games per week. If the teams you want to see aren't available, you're screwed.
I love baseball, but I'm not changing satellite systems (I have dishnetwork) AND paying $140 per season to see games I should be able to watch for free. I mean, they still show all the commercials in those subscription delivered games...
I'd rather (and I would think the TEAM would prefer that I) spend that $140 at the stadium on tickets to a couple games and beers/souvenirs.
Essentially, MLB has been seduced by fool's gold. Instead of making the game MORE accessible to young people, they put up another barrier that sends another group of kids that might otherwise enjoy baseball off to soccer camp.
In effect, they're killing the game with greed... Not a new thing, just a new angle to how they're doing it.
Who did what now?
Only if you are using Windows since the NFL (and college sports via Yahoo) streams only work in Windows Media Player. If you are using Linux you are SOL. There is no RealPlayer feed AFAIK.
:-)
I've never been able to get WMP streams to work in Linux MPlayer. Oh, well, there's always the sports bar.
Microsoft's VP of Customer Service is Helen Waite. If you are having problems with their products go to Helen Waite.
I don't know, but I imagine the nickel was for international postage. Of course, in saying that, I am assuming you got some sort of paper receipt.
That's right, the Yankees Eat Shit network. Now I don't have to fight gridlock to go to a game I have no interest in, the cable company's being strongarmed to send the game to me!
webcasts of every major pay per view for 19.95 i believe...better than the 39.95 i pay for watching it on sattelite
Micro brew maybe? I'd say Budwiser is a macro brew.
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
".....At last, an opportunity to see my hometown Detroit Tigers more than once a year!"
I hope this wont interfere with my efforts to view the Tigers LESS than once per year.
Geekbot...Flint, MI
Well, as though MLB isn't turning to total crap fast enough, now they've found a new way to alienate potential fans.
I have decided from now on the only sport I'm watching is Women's Volleyball....well, or anything else with women in a bikini...sport or not.
...When MLB was similarly trying to pick the pockets of fans outside of local AM broadcast range:
.500.
As a displaced Cleveland Indians fan for over 20 years (New Jersey, California, Texas, Hawaii, Japan and Maryland) I was very unhappy in 97 (or maybe 98) when the Indians decided to make streaming audio of their radio game broadcasts a premium feature of their web site (interesting to note that for about the last year of the MLB official team sites are now subbed off the MLB mothership domain).
The simple work-around at the time was to listen to the OPPOSING team's FREE RA (I think only the Pirates --and maybe one other team-- did not have such an offering).
I wrote the Indians a passionate letter to point out the fundamental flaws of the 'pay-for-streaming-audio' model:
1. Fans living in their local broadcast network area can listen to the game for free over the air. Even with a broadband connection and a decent PC, I still choose the stand-alone AM radio while slaving at the PC --if available . It's simple matter of conserving system resources for real work and having to eff around with RA whenever possible. And when I'm outside schlepping around the yard, the stand-alone AM is the obvious choice over the 'puter.
2. Attention MLB MBAs and marketing wizards: Those fans living outside the AM broadcast area network coverage aren't in a position to support your metro advertisers.
3. Therefore, the 'pay-for-streaming-audio' model essentially picks the pocket of out-of-town fans while those in the broadcast market get the same product for "free" (free being the exposure to ads).
4. MLB just doesn't get it. A-Rod making a quarter of a billion, and they want us to spend $20 for low quality, ad-laden, low-fidelity audio of a team that might not break
Boink em-- I'll go watch the minors; there are at least 5 (from A to AAA) within a 2-hour drive of my house: young guys who are not yet spoiled millionaires and still play high quality baseball in interesting --and intimate-- settings (usually with free parking, riduculously low ticket prices, and concessions that cost half of what an MLB venue charges). MLB continues to severing any connection between the game and the people who grew up loving it: they are just adding iformation technology to their toolkit for doing so.
"The feeds will come from television, complete with the home team's commentary and ads." If the webcast is going to show all of the tv ads anyway, the tv broadcast network is benefitting from having the additional webcast viewers! Why blackout the webcast at all?