Is Bud Wise?

Interesting little side discussion that has been happening this week.

As none of you will recall, a few days ago I decided to not post an open letter to TBS complaining about their mishandling of the postseason coverage for which they (presumably) paid a great deal. The primary thrust of that letter was my complaints about the awful experience of Postseason.tv, a so-called "companion" to TBS's broadcast of the MLB division series games. I won't go into depth on this topic know--there are other fish to fry--but my complaints were numerous: poor video feed quality; failure to synchronize the 4 cameras; the failure of any one camera to actually show the game; their misunderstanding of the online video market. Cursory web searches and anecdotal evidence suggests most fans agree with me on these points.

But the larger scope of this problem has to do with baseball's failure to generate hype going into its crucial playoff series. The reigning champion Philadelphia Phillies, who are 4-1 so far this postseason and looking like a legitimate threat to repeat as champions, have played just once during a prime-time television slot. They've also had a game rescheduled owing to snow, and been forced to change their starting pitcher because of it. Last night's exciting contest against the Dodgers, came with what seemed like zero national attention.

Today's Game 2 of the NLCS is again happening during work hours, at 1 pm local time/4 pm eastern. This is needless to say a television ratings killer, and also the start of a dubious weekend schedule concocted long ago by MLB. The Phillies and Dodgers will play while I'm at the office, then take Saturday off entirely, leaving baseball fans with only one playoff game to watch, at 8 pm. They'll then follow this up with two games on Sunday, when they're set to compete with a full schedule of NFL games.

This, after nearly a full week of non-games that would've received nonstop national coverage for about 72 hours. Not only that, the Yankees and Angels, which seems clearly to be the bigger-market matchup, has been set since late Sunday. Rather than play Game 1 on, say, Wednesday night, giving both teams two days to travel and rest, MLB has instead opted for a cold and rainy Friday night.

The fault for these errors lies both with TBS, whose mediocre productions (both online and on television) do very little to capture the drama of the games, and with Bud Selig--or someone in his office--who seem to have forgotten basic rules of television broadcasting.

The biggest victims so far appear to be the Phillies, who are actually having a pretty thrilling postseason, not that you'd ever know it.

MILES:

You know things are bad when I'm aching to hear Tim McGarver's voice. Things could get a lot worse for MLB, if tonight's Yanks-Angels game is rained out, which would force two baseball games to be played on Sunday and, most likely, push back the start of the third game in Los Angeles until at least Tuesday. It's not fair to expect the Yankees and Angels to finish a game late Sunday night, fly across country, and then play again Monday afternoon at 1:30 p.m. Both teams deserve a day off for travel.  

I understand that this schedule was probably set weeks, if not months, ago, but I just don't understand why MLB couldn't adjust after the Yankees and Angles both won their respective series in three games.