I rather like the concept of Major League Baseball’s mlb.tv. It lets you view baseball games on your computer. The service actually works pretty well and it’s neat to watch some games you won’t be able to see on regular TV, especially if you quietly follow an out of town team (like those lovable losers from the North Side). My only real complaint about the thing is that they insist on blacking out games that fall in your media market. That means I can’t watch Yankee games on the computer when I’m in the tri-state area. I more or less understand why this is (or at least I think I do… I imagine the owners and media folk don’t want to lose ad dollars by having people watch the games on anything other than the cable channels they worked out expensive deals for and that ad money) but it’s missing the point. Sometimes you’re just in a place where you can’t watch the game on TV but you could online. I’d love to be able to do this. If they’re worried about losing out on ad money, why not just show all the commercials and be done with it? Makes perfect sense to me. Then again, what do I know, I’m not a baseball team owner.
At least the rules aren’t as crazy and draconian as the NFL’s blackout rules (you can’t see your team’s game in the home market unless the game is sold out. What sort of nonsense is that?). Still, it’s time that baseball fully embraces this modern century and gives us the full online baseball experience.
Technorati Tags: baseball, blackout rules, mlb.tv
I have to say that one of the best things that ESPN has done over the past year or so was to start offering some real investment into getting some first class blogs going on their site. Hashmarks, their NFL blog, and TrueHoop, their NBA blog are both loaded with excellent writing, insightful analysis, some great interviews (the guys who write Hashmarks especially, as they are good with getting interviews with GM’s, team presidents, and other high ranking officials), and an in-depth look at stats.
My point is that I would love to see ESPN start up a similar blog for baseball. Right now, they have “blogs” from several of their correspondents that read more like daily dispatches from around the league than real blogs. I do like some of them. Rob Neyer has some decent dispatches that look at what newspaper writers around the league have to say about what’s happening in baseball which are insightful, but it lacks the real dedication that a permanent blogger can add to the mix because all the baseball guys are either TV analysists or columnists for the website in addition and you can tell in the quality of their work that this is the place where the put most of their concentration. It would make a great addition to the world of ESPN to see a baseball blog that’s as in depth and insightful as their excellent NBA and NFL blogs.
Technorati Tags: baseball, blogs, espn, hashmarks, truehoop
