Special Edition: I Want My A's TV!

[Wella's note: As promised, I'm providing a forum for others to write in Oakland Athletics Journal. If you have a baseball-related topic to expound on, email it to me. ]

I Want My A’s TV!
by Al

According to Nielsen, the Bay Area is the sixth largest media market in the country. We have so many TV stations, the only thing we lack is a local affiliate of Al Jazeera. But we can’t see A’s games played on weekday afternoons.

Part of this is tradition. Back in the old days before cable and satellite TV, most markets had only the Big Three network affiliates. And the networks frowned on their local affils dumping “Days of Our Lives” for the town team’s afternoon contest.

Part of this is demographics. Baseball is considered the Old Geezer’s sport. When audiences for the major sports are broken out by demographics, only golf leads baseball as having a larger percentage of adults in its audience.

It’s this demographic that kills weekday daytime baseball TV. Most of those adults are actually working somewhere. But in the pre-Tivo era, that demographic was a deal-killer. Why broadcast a game when the target audience is at work? But Tivo (or more generically, the DVR) has changed the equation. Now fans can time-shift the broadcast. And advertisers can’t even claim to be given short shrift. A recent study shows that ad recall is not affected by DVR ownership. So in fact advertisers would benefit by having the weekday afternoon games broadcast and time-shifted.


Rupert Murdoch sucks, but of course I mean that in the nicest possible way. His Fox media empire has a lock on Bay Area sports programming. His obvious locus of power is FSN Bay Area, which periodically broadcasts Warriors, Sharks, Giants and A's games. In addition, he has KTVU, to sew up the rest of the Giants' schedule, and KICU, to monopolize the A's.

The problem is that none of these outlets broadcast the A's or any of the other teams consistently. The A's weren't on TV Tuesday, and it wasn't even like the game was an afternoon game. It started at 5 p.m. PST, when local baseball fans could slip into their favorite watering hole to catch a couple of innings before staggering home. (Considering the way the Rangers were treating Zito, maybe this was a blessing.) But that's not how I see.

Murdoch holds this stranglehold, thanks to Bud "Steroids, we don't got no stinkin' steroids" Selig, who presides over a broadcast policy that sells you a MLB Extra Innings subscription, entitling you to over 60 games a week, then blanks you out.

So Tuesday, Extra Innings subscribers like me could get the A's game... unless you live in the Bay Area in which case you got blacked out. I'm OK with the blackout as long as the game is broadcast on local TV. (I'd much rather watch the game with Ray Fosse than with Bert Blyleven, the Twins color guy who amuses himself by scribing digital circles around cherubic fans at the Metrodome.) But when Fox ignores the A's, I want to see them on Extra Innings. As an A's fan, I'd be better served by living in Pocatello.

Forbes just released its estimated value of baseball franchises for 2006, and the Yankees topped $1 billion. “George Steinbrenner” is a four-letter word in my dictionary, but he’s got this figured out. The Yankees broadcast every game. So do the Red Sox and Mets, who were runners-up to the Yankees in value.

Let’s hope the A’s and/or the Bay Area media get on the bandwagon. To all our benefit.

Al has been an A's fan since attending a 1972 World Series game at the Coliseum.