Local Television (Over the Air) Baseball

@dwinth The home opener in Detroit is a simulcast of the FSDetroit, same programs/commercials, as it is on the Fox O&O WJBK channel 2.

Chris
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@SportsFan1972 wrote:
Chris, I am only old enough to remember Harry Caray with the Cubs.

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That was @dwinth talking about Harry Caray, but it was a trick question to see how old you are.  Harry Caray started at St Louis Cards in 1945 (later teaming w/Jack Buck) , Oakland A's 1970, Chicago White Sox 1971 and the Cubs in 1981. 

Edit:  We had a pretty good announcer for 37 years for the Detroit Tigers named George Kell, teamed w/Tiger great Al Kaline in the TV booth.  Our long time radio announcer, Ernie Harwell was no slouch either.

Chris
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Oakland's one local broadcast game gets an asterisk, as it's against San Francisco and is a Giants broadcast.

Speaking of the Giants, their local OTA broadcasts aren't all on Fridays - here are the remaining ones:

Saturday 5/9
Wednesday 5/20
Saturday 5/30
Friday 6/12
Friday 6/19
Wednesday 6/24
Saturday 7/11
Friday 7/17
Friday 7/24
Monday 7/27
Thursday 8/13
Friday 8/28
Saturday 9/12

In fact, they had one on Wednesday 4/29 that caused a problem as it forced the station to move an episode of Law & Order: SVU that was actually part 2 of a three-part crossover with Chicago Fire (which aired the previous night) and Chicago PD (which aired on the station after the game) to one of its digital subchannels - which, of course, U-Verse doesn't carry.

My guess as to why there are so few teams with OTA channels: there aren't many OTA channels willing to show them.  There aren't as many independent stations as there used to be, and networks are not happy when its shows (and the commercials it sells to air during those shows) get moved to a different time or even day because of local sports.

Case in point: the Giants were on KTVU pretty much since they moved to San Francisco.  However, when KTVU became a Fox affiliate, the baseball games started causing problems with the schedule; pre-empted shows would air at midnight, and if a game ran long, any show that was supposed to air after the game was moved to midnight as well, with no warning.  Fox (and the advertisers) was not particularly happy that KTVU was doing this to its shows, and to the commercials that went with them.  Also, KTVU had to listen to the post-episode promos that Fox aired, and would play music over the ones that mentioned a show airing on a date and time when KTUV broadcast a Giants game.  Fox threw a fit, and now the Giants are on a different channel.

A similar problem with the Athletics was one of the reasons NBC actually took away its affiliation from KRON.  There was one year when, because of an A's game, KRON decided to air NBC's coverage of the USA Olympic Track & Field Trials one year from midnight to 4 AM?

Too bad the teams can't start their own OTA channels. Heck, we in Columbus had something like that called Columbus Sports Network (CSN for short) that was supposed to have Crew soccer, some Ohio State stuff like football and basketball not selected for ESPN/ABC/CBS and maybe even some minor-league baseball stuff plus stuff from the local race track.

Well, the Big Ten Conference decided to start their own channel (BTN) and they took everything Ohio State related and that was the essential end of CSN. It was only on the air a few months before flipping formats and I think it eventually died out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WCSN-LD

Take Detroit for example. In theory, the Red Wing (NHL), Tigers (MLB) and Pistons (NBA) and maybe even Toledo Mudhens (Tigers affiliate) could start a "Detroit Sports Channel" and all show/simulcast a few Saturday/Sunday games on there, but I'm sure they'd have to re-negotiate with FS Detroit and whatever other channels.

No, it appears the future of TV sportscasting is for each team to either start a network on their own or to team up with other local/regional teams and start their own pay-channel like what Time Warner has done in several areas. More money that way.