Breaking Down The Nationally Televised Games By Team
Friday, April 18, 2008
(posted by One More Dying Quail)
I'm pretty sure AA didn't do this already, but in order to prepare myself for the coming months, I decided to do a team-by-team breakdown of this season's nationally televised MLB games. As expected, the Mets, Yankees and Red Sox top the list:
| Team | TBS | FOX | ESPN | Total |
| New York Mets | 1 | 10 | 3 | 14 |
| New York Yankees | 3 | 9 | 2 | 14 |
| Boston Red Sox | 2 | 8 | 3 | 13 |
| Los Angeles Angels | 9 | 3 | 12 | |
| Atlanta Braves | 1 | 10 | 1 | 12 |
| Detroit Tigers | 1 | 8 | 2 | 11 |
| Chicago Cubs | 1 | 8 | 1 | 10 |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 1 | 9 | 10 | |
| Philadelphia Phillies | 1 | 8 | 1 | 10 |
| Cleveland Indians | 1 | 8 | 9 | |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 8 | 1 | 9 | |
| Seattle Mariners | 1 | 6 | 7 | |
| Arizona Diamondbacks | 1 | 6 | 7 | |
| Chicago White Sox | 4 | 2 | 6 | |
| San Diego Padres | 6 | 6 | ||
| Colorado Rockies | 4 | 1 | 5 | |
| Minnesota Twins | 4 | 1 | 5 | |
| Milwaukee Brewers | 1 | 3 | 4 | |
| Cincinnati Reds | 3 | 3 | ||
| San Francisco Giants | 2 | 2 | ||
| Toronto Blue Jays | 1 | 1 | ||
| Washington Nationals | 1 | 1 | ||
| Baltimore Orioles | 1 | 1 | ||
| Tampa Bay Rays | 0 | |||
| Houston Astros | 0 | |||
| Kansas City Royals | 0 | |||
| Florida Marlins | 0 | |||
| Texas Rangers | 0 | |||
| Oakland Athletics | 0 | |||
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 0 |
The only station that has released a full schedule thus far is FOX (with the exception of the final two weeks of the season, which are TBD). The last game listed for TBS is May 25; for ESPN, the last known game is July 20 (June 1-July 6 are TBD). FOX's schedule also includes a number of regional games, which accounts for the large number of games.
Seven teams are not currently scheduled to appear on national television at all in 2008. Most are unsurprising, but I have to say that the absence of at least one Tampa Bay game is a bit shocking. The Rays are this year's "It" team, full of youth and vim and vigor, a fact that I thought might have appealed to the television people.
Two notes regarding the weekend:
1) Like last weekend, we'll be throwing up two open threads and seeing if they stick - one on Saturday for FOX (Dodgers vs. Braves, Indians vs. Twins, or Mets vs. Phillies) and one on Sunday night for ESPN (Mets vs. Phillies). Put on your commenting shoes and stop by.
2) My email address is onemoredyingquail@gmail.com. Please do send along any tips, hate mail, or money to that address.
Labels: ESPN Sunday Night Baseball, FOX Baseball, TBS Baseball
10 Comments:
Doesn't come as a surprise. The big market teams are always going to have more televised games as a driving force to acquire ratings.
But that doesn't mean I want to watch the Yankees and Red Sox week, after week, after week...
These numbers seem flawed to me. I seem to remember watching a Rays-Yanks game last week on ESPN, and I live in Washington State. The two to three weekday national games on ESPN don't count? It certainly feels like the weekday ESPN games are always Yankees, Red Sox or Mets.
I was thinking the same thing, sigs. Maybe the list is from now through the rest of the season. I'd be bitter if I was a Colorado Rockies fan: NL Champs last year, #4 in the NL West in national TV appearances.
This list is definitely flawed. The Red Sox played on ESPN channels three times just last week (twice against the Yankees, once against the Indians). When I added them up myself, including Fox's games (even though they are regional), I got 20 televised games for the Red Sox (22 including the two games in Japan) and 21 for the Yankees . Those are the only ones I counted, but those are definitely different numbers than this list shows.
Also, Boston's website seems to know when ESPN will be broadcasting games beyond July 20. It indicates two ESPN games in July, one in August and one in September for the Sox.
I'm not so sure about the Rays being the "it" team right now. They're looking more and more like a MASH unit (two of the top three starters, the starting catcher, the starting 1B and biggest slugger, and the starting right fielder are all on the DL), and they're already getting buried in the standings. By the time everyone's healthy they may already be an afterthought...and if that happens, good luck getting that ordinance for building that proposed new stadium of theirs on the ballot in St. Petersburg this November.
Know what? I made a mistake of ommission here. The games I counted were for weekends only, since that's when I'm here, a fact that wasn't made clear. My apologies.
No need for apologies. You actually did some research and thought it up. We used the age-old anecdotal evidence, conjecture and 'I seem to remember' to blow holes in your theory from a distance.
That being said, Red Sox, Yankees and Mets games are still on TV too much.
The FOX games are not national, they're regional.