MLB and FOX: A Marriage Made in Hell

Here we are, only October 16th, and already the weather is playing a significant factor in baseball's playoffs schedule. If you're in the Tri-State/New England area and haven't peeked out your window yet, go take a look.  Then ask yourself, would I want to play baseball in this?  Would I want to watch baseball in this? Probably not.  But weather, decent playing conditions, fans comfort, these are of little concern to The Commish Bud Selig and the people at FOX Sports.   FOX has created an ironclad schedule that maneuvers around their football schedule like Leon Washington.  That makes sense for FOX since they have taken on two major sporting commitments that happen to take place in the same month. The problem lies in the scheduling conflict it creates for baseball.  Baseball has no flexibility to adapt to what's happening weather-wise or within their own series. The Yankees and the Angels both wrapped up their Division Series sweeps on Sunday.  Five days later and their ALCS hasn't started yet.  Five days.  The earliest the World Series could end is November 1st and we have two teams waiting five days to start a series? The Dodgers finished last Saturday, the Phillies on Monday.  It still took until Thursday to start their series. There are some benefits to the teams with this schedule.  It allows both teams to setup their pitching the way they want, with their aces having plenty of off-days to start game one on full rest.  That's a nice by-product of the process but it's not the reason the schedule was setup this way.  We know this because there are only three days between the end of the NLCS and the World Series and two days between the ALCS and the World Series.   If the Yankees and Angels go to a game 7 and CC Sabathia is pitching as Joe Girardi seems to be planning, he would not be available for game 1 of the World Series and could only start game two on three days rest. Would it be fair to both teams to start the ALCS and NLCS two days after the final Division Series games?  Why not?  It can't be any less fair than determining home field advantage for the World Series in a July exhibition game.  If a team manages to end their Division Series early, they deserve to have their pitching lined up better.  To the victor's go the spoils.  It would also allow Major League Baseball to keep the travel days as off-days, rather than using the travel day to makeup a rainout.   What doesn't make sense is determining these things based on a network like FOX that is more concerned about their football commitments than they are about postseason baseball.   Consider November 1st, scheduled to be game four of the World Series.  Before the Phillies and Dodgers even started the NLCS, the  NFL (and by association, FOX Television) announced that the Eagles-Giants game scheduled for 4PM in Philadelphia that day had been moved up to 1PM to accommodate a possible World Series game in Philly that evening.   Apparently, the football stadium and the baseball stadium share parking facilities, although most people from Philly will tell you that concerts and sporting events have coincided without much issue.  It also stands to reason that the money-makers who created the new ballpark were not going to lock themselves out of revenue by not having parking available. Here's the rub, though: by pushing the Giants and Eagles back to 1PM and right up against the Jets-Dolphins game, FOX has four games scheduled in the 1PM time slot nationally.  To make room for the Eagles, the NFL moved the Viking-Packers game to 4PM on FOX, where only one other national game is scheduled. Why is that significant?  Brett Favre has been a ratings king this season:

Brett Favre last night became the first NFL quarterback to vanquish each of the league’s 32 teams, but it was ESPN’s ratings performance that had advertisers buzzing.The Oct. 5 installment of Monday Night Football now stands as the most-watched telecast in cable TV history, drawing 21.8 million total viewers, per Nielsen live-plus-same-day ratings estimates. Demo deliveries are pending.The 39-year-old Favre led the Minnesota Vikings to a 30-23 victory over the Green Bay Packers, establishing bragging rights over the NFC North and knocking off the previous all-time cable ratings record. ESPN set the high-water mark a year ago, when 18.6 million fans tuned in for its presentation of the Sept. 15 Eagles-Cowboys showdown.Since the season began, ESPN’s Monday Night Football coverage is averaging 15.6 million total viewers. 

What do you think the ratings will be the

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 time Favre plays the Packers?  In Green Bay, no less? By moving the Packers to 4PM, FOX eliminated two regional games from their national coverage, meaning the Packers-Vikings will be reaching an audience possibly three times the size of the 1PM games. That means more money for advertising time.  Not only do New Yorkers once again have to pick between the Giants and the Jets at 1PM as they did in week 3, but the NFL gets an excuse to move a game based on a World Series who's participants haven't even been determined yet! Oh, and that game four of the World Series won't start until 8:20 PM rather than the usual 7:57 PM to accommodate Brett Favre's homecoming ratings bonanza.  Enjoy, kiddies who have school the next day! MLB is as much to blame for these scenarios.  They rightfully have chased the highest dollar they can get from the networks to broadcast their typically low-rated postseason series.  One can't help but wonder, though, how much better the ratings might be if the games didn't end at midnight on a Sunday.  Maybe MLB should look into getting a little bit more control of their own schedule and doing what's right for baseball instead of a media monolith like FOX.  Maybe ABC/ESPN could be a little more accommodating between their two networks. Either way, once again, it's the fans who come last.  At least we'll get lots of nice star sightings and previews for FOX's prime time series.  We'll have that going for us.  Which is nice...