Posted by dahsdebater on 8/2/2014 5:37:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 8/2/2014 4:25:00 PM (view original):

I'll answer for you.  English soccer.  Why?

I guess it shouldn't surprise me that you think Madrid is in England...

What I know about soccer is pretty close to what you know about women.   I assumed it was the English Premier League.   Sort of like Toronto being in the American League.

IOW, eat a dick, you pretentious *****.

Nonetheless, FOX would rather show soccer being played by teams from England and Spain than Yanks/Sox in August.

Yeah, baseball is doing just fine.

Well, ****, better start throwing guys out of the hall of fame and, while you're at it, find a way to make baseball faster and more exciting.

Otherwise everyone's going to start watching soccer for its fast pace and high scoring...

This happens every four years. Interest in soccer spikes around the World Cup and Fox is trying to capitalize on it. Check back next year when everyone's ignoring soccer again.

The HOF IS in OBVIOUS need of modernization, but there is no need for RADICAL change. Yes, Jim Rice and Bert Blyleven in the HOF is just WRONG, but, for the most part, the system works. There are years where there are abberations, and yes, I'd LOVE to see more voter "accountability", but reviewing talent will ALWAYS be SOMEWHAT subjective. What I would like to see is some kind of standard adopted for the voters. The BBWA is getting to be more of a joke every year as newspapers in general continue to become more and more irrelevant. What I think would make a REAL difference is a "voters election"... Where some group votes on who votes. Let every owner, manager and gm vote, along with every umpire and each teams lead broadcaster and writer. Elect a panel of 50 every year, and those guys all vote on the HOF class for that year. With something like this, you would arrive at a list of the 50 most RESPECTED opinions on the game every year. And then they would decide the HOF class for that particular year. It would ELIMINATE favoritism, bias and just plain old STUPIDITY (LeBatard) from the equation and make for a MUCH better HOF moving forward.

Yeah, Glavine doesn't belong either.   Thanks for playing.

Back on topic, NBC showed infommercials on the network channel and soccer(some kind of tourney) on NBCSP.   To recap:

FOX:  Soccer
NBC: Infommercials
NBCSP:  Soccer
FS1:  Baseball

Yay baseball!!!!!

The same people that say "Selig is a dumbass" sound exactly like Selig when they say "Baseball isn't in decline."

Posted by MikeT23 on 8/3/2014 7:23:00 AM (view original):
Yeah, Glavine doesn't belong either.   Thanks for playing.

Back on topic, NBC showed infommercials on the network channel and soccer(some kind of tourney) on NBCSP.   To recap:

FOX:  Soccer
NBC: Infommercials
NBCSP:  Soccer
FS1:  Baseball

Yay baseball!!!!!

Pretty sure NBC doesn't have MLB broadcast rights.

Retard.

Posted by MikeT23 on 8/2/2014 7:05:00 PM (view original):
Nonetheless, FOX would rather show soccer being played by teams from England and Spain than Yanks/Sox in August.

Yeah, baseball is doing just fine.

Or, more accurately, Fox launched a new 24/7 sports network within the last 12 months and wanted to push some of its more valuable content to that network in order to facilitate getting more (and more lucrative) carriage agreements with the cable providers.  

I'm not really saying "baseball is fine", but in the current environment, the decision on what goes on cable vs. what goes on the network isn't as simple as which one is likely to draw more eyes on the network.

Isn't NBCSP kind of new?    Because NBC chose infommercials over soccer.    Do they not have the same goal as FOX?

Truth is, and I don't particularly like it, is I believe a high level soccer game, in wake of the World Cup, will draw more viewers than a game in August between Yanks/Sox.

Posted by MikeT23 on 8/4/2014 8:10:00 AM (view original):
Isn't NBCSP kind of new?    Because NBC chose infommercials over soccer.    Do they not have the same goal as FOX?

Truth is, and I don't particularly like it, is I believe a high level soccer game, in wake of the World Cup, will draw more viewers than a game in August between Yanks/Sox.

Well, I think that technically NBC chose nothing over soccer and your local NBC affiliate went with infommercials, but whatever.  I'm not sure what you think my point was if you think this contradicts it - NBC could have gotten more eyeballs with the soccer than... nothing, and probably more than it would have gotten on NBCSN, but having the content for NBCSN was more valuable to them.

And yeah, it's possible that this particular soccer game could have drawn more than an August baseball game - I have no clue, I haven't seen any numbers yet, but I'm telling you that's not really how the decision went down in this case.  The decision to move a bunch of games from FOX to FS1 (while also doubling the total number of nation games via Fox networks) was made in the TV contract that was struck in late 2012, before that soccer game was even in existance - and I guarantee you that was about Fox wanting content for the FS1 launch as opposed to wanting to clear space on the main network for soccer or anything else. 

FS1 obviously needs content(soccer is also content) but are you saying that, in 2012, FOX committed MLB to FS1 in 2014 and cannot change the programming plan?

Under the terms of the current contract, FOX has 12 Saturday afternoon games on FOX and 40 other games on FS1.  I would assume they have some flex to what the schedule for the Saturday afternoon games are. And obviously MLB wouldn't blink if they wanted to suddenly show a bunch more games on FOX, but they sold themselves to carriers based on that contract and if they start moving some of their most valuable programming up to FOX after the fact, I assume that would create problems with those deals.

And yes, soccer is also content, but it's not baseball.  And FOX has the World Cup in 2018 and 2022, but almost no regular soccer rights.  I think just the UEFA Champions League at this point, aside from a one off thing like Saturday.  It looks to me like national baseball regular season broadcasts on FOX still consistently average over 2 million+ viewers, which is what FOX got for the Champions League final back in May.  Best I can tell, the best NBC did with an EPL game last season was 1 million.  Haven't seen numbers for Saturday's game yet, but it was only a pre-season tournament, so it's hard for me to think, even with a World Cup bump, that it would rival the Champions League final.