Baseball LCS ratings down! The world is coming to an end!

It certainly doesn't help baseball either when the first half of the mainbar previewing the series is all about the potential ratings disaster. Shouldn't the story be about the teams on the field? Not that baseball should dictate to AP what the story is, but it's like the All-Star Game preview last July, which was more about potential protests of Arizona's immigration law instead of the game.

 

It's interesting to turn on ESPN on the Monday and Tuesday before a World Series, and the World Series talk comes after the shittiest NFL game of the weekend.

 

Because they're not giving one automatic spot in the World Series to them.

 

Ratings aside, one statement I could never wrap my head around is from people who say they can't watch the MLB postseason, NHL or the NBA until the Super Bowl is over. I mean, it's not like there is an NFL game on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday or Saturday. And there are rarely any marquee college football games on the ESPN family of networks on Thursday or Friday nights.

 

I'm obviously in the minority on this given the numbers, but the only way I will watch the postseason is if the Yankees and Red Sox AREN'T in it for very long. Walking/working the pitcher might have proved its value as a way to win ballgames, but it is so painfully boring to watch. The 30 seconds between pitches doesn't help either.

I would love to see some numbers on first-pitch hitting or swinging early in the count, but it has seemed to me that there's much more attack mode in the offenses.

 

The NFL did it by making sure the fans of every team believed that their favorite squad had the same opportunity to win as every other team in the league, something MLB does not have. The NFL did it with far more significant revenue sharing and a salary cap and floor from the moment free agency was allowed.

Give every team a fair shot and a fair amout of national exposure and watch things improve.

And bringing the WNBA into the argument, whatever your intent, is ridiculous. They simply didn't have a product that people want to buy. That is not the case with MLB.

 

Wouldn't have a thing to do with the fact that ESPN carried said game ... of course not!

 

This. I know the Redskins aren't winning the Super Bowl. But they'll probably at least be in the hunt for a wild card spot deep into November. That keeps me interested in the season. The Orioles? It's over by the end of April. Every. Friggin. Year. I know from the start that they have no chance to compete with the Yankees/Sawx. Maybe when the O's pile up 10 years of No. 1 picks like Tampa did, that will change. But not until then. Fans in at least one third of the major league markets start the year knowing there's no chance for their teams to compete. Hard to get invested in it when that's the case. I don't want to get into the salary cap/no salary cap argument, but that's just the truth right now. And yes, I know poor management is as much to blame as anything for Baltimore's 15-year struggles.

 

A big reason for this is that baseball is just so much more predictable than the NFL. I don't know what you can do about that. It's the nature of the sport. There is actually more parity than there has ever been in baseball, as was documented in the Atlantic critique of "Moneyball" that was discussed at length on this board. It isn't that football has greater parity once you look back at the season that was. It's that it can be much more difficult to predict, when the season begins, who will be good and who will be bad.

I would love to perform a study of old preview magazines in both sports and see how much better baseball has gotten at predictions as compared to football, comparatively, since sabermetrics. I bet football has stayed pretty consistently unpredictable.

 

You're conflating the on-field parity argument with the "equal TV coverage leads to increased interest for lesser teams" argument. The NFL does not provide equal TV coverage for all teams. If two poor teams play each other, their game may only be broadcast in their markets. Not everyone gets a national Sunday game or a Sunday/Monday night game. The Patriots, Cowboys (for better or worse), Packers and New York teams get more clearance on Sunday and more prime time slots than the Jaguars, Cardinals, Chiefs and Texans. The only reason Detroit ever got national TV the last few years was because the NFL is willing to uphold the Thanksgiving tradition.

The NBA has done pretty much followed your m.o. by promoting and televising the WNBA *way* beyond its national interest in hopes of sparking a fire. It hasn't worked. But not because of lack of effort. There's no proof that intentionally spiking exposure of anything leads to inflated interest, at least not in sports. People like what people like. And people don't want to see the teams they don't want to see. It's not ESPN's job to rig that. It's their job to deliver ratings.

 

Is it just me or does it seem these two posters are having completely unrelated discussions, but somehow each thinks the other is arguing with him?

I'm really confused because I think you actually believe the same thing -- that the networks can't force people to like a certain team, but if you give more teams a chance to become good, then more teams will get national TV coverage (because they're good), thereby providing the desired result.

Or I might have completely misread this, because it's making my head hurt.

Carry on.

 

Joe king (I'm not going to quote the whole block or I'll give myself a headache): His argument is that by showing more games involving other teams, people will become conditioned to them and be more likely to support them, thus ensuring a Rangers-Tigers ALCS would have similar TV ratings to a Yankees-Red Sox series. My argument is that networks cannot drive what's not there, and that there's no successful history of a sports team or league that became popular because it was given outsize broadcast exposure relative to its interest level.