What's the All-Time Worst TV Deal for a Major Sport?

[TMC]

From the standpoint of professional wrestling, ECW's deal w/ the Nashville Network (the precursor to Spike TV which currently airs WWE programming like "Raw" and "Sunday Night Heat") in late 1999/mid-2000 instantly comes to mind. TNN rarely advertised ECW, they meddled a lot in terms of censorship (and pretty much stripped Extreme Championship Wrestling of its character), and put it in a terrible time-slot.

Major League Baseball=The CBS deal in the early 1990s:
-The Saturday Game of the Week which was a long time staple on NBC now became the "Game of Every Other Week. It seemed like CBS was much more concerned w/ golf in the Summer time and football in the Fall to really give MLB any actual sense of continuity

Major League Baseball=The Baseball Network (circa 1994-1995):
-After four years on CBS, MLB returned to ABC & NBC but on a much more limited basis. The Game of the Week was gone altogether and ABC & NBC only broadcast six prime-time regular season games each (albeit based on region than national). To make matters even first, the playoffs (including the League Championship Series) were weren't aired nationally as the 1995 World Series rotated on ABC & NBC.

NBA=CBS circa mid-1970s to early 1980s (or pre-Magic & Bird):
-The NBA was apparently in such a sorry state at the time (e.g. drugs, fights, lukewarm attendance, sluggish play, etc.) that many of the games (including the NBA Finals) were aired on tape-delay after the late local news.

NBA=ABC, ESPN, & TNT (2002-present):
-The for the first time, the All-Star Game is aired on cable rather than a broadcast network
-ABC went for the MLB on CBS approach w/ scheduling their NBA games
-ABC waits until the second year (after the 2003 NBA Finals between San Antonio was the worst rated NBA Finals ever) before getting their biggest gun Al Michaels to do play-by-play w/ a lame duck Doc Rivers (lame duck because he's going to coach again next year anyway)
-ABC has generic and uninspired theme music unlike the melodic and jazzy ones that CBS & NBC had for their NBA coverage in the 1980s & 1990s respectively

MLB on Fox (2001-present):
-Fox has made an utter mockery at covering the World Series by placing "virtual ads" for their TV shows & movies on the backstop. Not only that, but during the 2002 World Series between San Francisco Giants & Anaheim Angels, they sold-out when they used a couple of their pre-game shows to hype up "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle."
-The first few years of the contract, Fox dumped several first-round playoff games on their lowly second-rate sister network Fox Family Channel (which is now ABC Family). Fortunately, ESPN got back the rights to air Division Series games after spending a year having to do the job on ABC Family (albeit w/ ESPN announcers, ESPN music, and ESPN graphics).
-Fox once cut away from the impending celebration (from like 80/100 of the nation) of the long-suffering Angels finally winning the American League pennant in 2002 so that we can cut to the NLCS game that didn't have any do-or-die stipulations at the time
-Tim McCarver, who helped ruin CBS' time w/ MLB w/ his arguably overtly analytical & pompus style to color commentating (w/ the help of Steve Lyons), is once again pushed as the star of the show
-Fox ruined "This Week In Baseball"
-Fox's idea towards covering baseball is to make it look like a exaggerated video-game come to life or baseball w/ a football-minded production team

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Re: What's the All-Time Worst TV Deal for a Major Sport?

by - Uncreative_Name 22 hours ago (Wed May 5 14:26:34) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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I have to go with the current NBA deal. The playoffs are much too far apart. They control the games pretty much and the 7 game first round format is plain awful. Don't forget last year's finals with the time and the teams and everything else working against it.

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Re: What's the All-Time Worst TV Deal for a Major Sport?

by - lad6233 22 hours ago (Wed May 5 14:40:45) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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The worst deal for a TV station was NBC airing the XFL.

I say the worst tv deal for a major sport is NBC's coverage of NASCAR. NBC should stand for Nothing But Commericials. Its not even worth watching the race with so many breaks. And not to mention Darryl Waltrip as an announcer is just plain annoying with his bias to certain drivers. Me and alot of people i know just turn the tv on with the sound off and listen to the race on the radio. If it wasnt for the radio you wouldnt know where any of the drivers were running except for the DEI cars.

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Re: What's the All-Time Worst TV Deal for a Major Sport?

by - dunstable 21 hours ago (Wed May 5 16:03:23) Ignore this User | Report Abuse


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It's hard to hate Darryl Waltrip, but I have to admit, he can be grating during a race broadcast. It's amazing that they found someone more annoying than Buddy Baker, but there he is.

I don't know if this qualifies as a "major sport" anymore, but the worst deal right now is CART's with Spike. I cannot possibly imagine how CART (or whatever they're called these days) will benefit from this deal. At least on Speedvision, their target audience is already tuned into the channel; who will think to tune into Spike for an auto race?

I suppose open wheel racing is not as popular as it once was, but surely there are fans out there. When the networks show everything from extreme sports to women's rodeo, can't they squeeze in two hours every other week for the likes of Paul Tracy and Jimmy Vasser? What happened here?

--

"I hate you with the burning passion of a thousand STDs!"

Re: the webs linger

by - abaiah 6 hours ago (Thu May 6 07:14:00) Ignore this User | Report Abuse

UPDATED Thu May 6 07:19:09

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Although the Spider-Man Yankee deal doesn't bother me that much, where do we draw the line? Fans of the game may see this as crass commercialization of a cherished pasttime while fans of the movie may tune in to the game just out of sheer curiosity and develop a real interest in the teams playing. Really though, should baseball's place in this capitalist society be limited to that of fan attendance gates and advertising deals done by the players themselves? I myself think that perhaps the uniformity of the teams' playing fields should be limited in ornamental detail to that of the home teams' logos or we will only see this rather minor cross-cultural deal turn into a hydra where new regulations will need to be created to top it (the ads on the walls even grate on me a little). Eventually such regulations could eclipse the glory of the players themselves, much like the strike of a couple of years ago.
Now like was mentioned above, seeing the webs on the bases is going to be cool, but perhaps we should nip this in the bud now before it's too late. Don't get me wrong, freedom is extremely key in the populace's peace, so any regulation of said freedom will cause at least a little recoil from those who might have benefited from it.


What do y'all think about the Spiderman deal?