Baseball’s storied “Game of the Week” is dead after Saturday. It will not be missed.
Baseball’s “Game of the Night” begins in 1990 on ESPN. It will be a can’t-miss hit.
For the past 33 years, the “Game of the Week” has been a Saturday afternoon fixture on network television. But in Major league Baseball’s four-year contract with CBS to begin in 1990, the network will do only 12 regular season games (in addition to all league championship series and World Series telecasts). The bulk of national baseball exposure will shift to cable for the first time, with ESPN doing 175 games a season.
So NBC—which has telecast baseball since 1947—is out with its every-Saturday-of-the-season games and ABC is out with its once-in-a-while prime-time broadcasts.
The passing of the “Game of the Week” is being mourned among many NBC types and baseball fans. After all, it’s the end of a TV era, a familiar, friendly constant, the backdrop of any midsummer Saturday afternoon. We may not watch most of the games, but it’s always there as we come and go from weekend activities. We’re always just a flip of a dial away from the national pastime. Indeed, many of us may not really miss the “Game of the Week” until it’s no longer there. As Curt Smith, author of “Voices of The Game,” says, “In many parts of America, it is—without exaggeration—a true institution; for millions of Americans, their TV umbilical cord to baseball.”
In addition, not only does the new CBS package give us only 12 Saturdays of network baseball instead of NBC’s 26, it leaves us completely in the dark in the key month of September. When pennant races are heating up in the final weeks of the regular season, there will be no baseball on network TV. CBS has college football obligations in September, and at the moment, plans to skip from August to October with its baseball coverage.
Finally, this change continues the disenfranchisement of many American homes from sports viewing. More than 40 percent of U.S. homes do not receive ESPN; thus, more than 40 percent of Americans will not get any national baseball telecasts during the season other than CBS’s abbreviated schedule.
“Baseball being on cable… is a plus. If you have cable and can afford it, you will be better served than ever before,” says NBC sportscaster Bob Costas. “… But for the others, the demise of the ‘Game of the Week’ is not just cutting out a piece of Americana, it is cutting baseball out of the lives of a great many people. They will be baseball-less. It’s a shame.”
Still, the “Game of the Week” increasingly became a relic on the verge of ruins in a changing TV universe:
- In recent years, “Game of the Week” ratings have tumbled. Barely 5 percent of the nation is watching a typical Saturday NBC baseball telecast.
- NBC may beam its signal across the land, but it pointed its cameras only at the largest markets. So week in and week out, we got a heavy dose of the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers and Cubs. Forget the 26 teams of the American and National leagues; the NBC League was a three-city production.
- NBC had exclusivity on its time period; when the network broadcast baseball, no team could broadcast locally its own game. But as was proven when ABC broadcast Sunday games without similar exclusivity, viewers prefer to watch their home team to watching a national game.
- Almost every NBC game was selected for telecast before the season even began, leaving little room for flexibility to cover teams that surprisingly emerged as pennant contenders.
Bye-bye NBC, hello ESPN.
For the 60 percent of the nation that will get ESPN, the cable network’s package will redefine how baseball is watched. It will do games four nights a week, with doubleheaders Tuesdays and Fridays. ESPN’s Sunday night national game of the week will become a fitting end to the weekend. ESPN will surpass NBC in pregame and postgame coverage, it will update scores of other games better than NBC, it will switch to more compelling games—for instance, if a no-hitter is brewing elsewhere—as NBC never did. And every club will get on ESPN during each season.
Still, critics persist, what about that 60-40 split between ESPN and non-ESPN homes? Many people cannot get cable or cannot afford cable. But for the have-nots, it’s not as bad as it looks. Essentially, they will go from a network “Game of the Week” every Saturday to one every other Saturday. Many non-ESPN homes have access to local over-the-air baseball telecasts. And all postseason games—thankfully—will remain on network TV. As for September, Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent apparently may request CBS look into a prime-time game or two in the final month—a good public relations move for baseball that the network would consider seriously.
So while we may miss Costas and Vin Scully, many of us will marvel at baseball finally getting a chance to brighten our living rooms all summer long, night in and night out. That will be the backdrop fans deserve.
Around The Dial
TV On The Hill: Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) said this week he will hold hearings Nov. 1 on the Senate Antitrust subcommittee he chairs to investigate whether consumers are being hurt by the shift of sports programming to cable. Metzenbaum, a frequent critic of cable deregulation, said: “Sports fans are caught in a squeeze play between the sports leagues, which get special treatment under the federal antitrust laws, and the cable industry, which is an unregulated monopoly.” Recently, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has urged hearings on the new Major League Baseball contract with CBS and ESPN.
Beathard On Beathard: Now in his first season as an “NFL Live” contributor on NBC, Bobby Beathard did radio reports and a weekly TV show while he was the Redskins’ general manager. But Beathard says he never considered a broadcast career after football (or between football jobs, as the case may be). “No, ‘cause every once in a while I’d have [the show] on my car radio on the way home and I’d say, ‘No way,’ And to tell you the truth, I never even saw the television show. They gave me the tapes, but I didn’t want to watch it.”
Tip Of The Week: On weekends the Financial News Network turns from stocks to jocks, running low-quality sports update shows and dreadful tout and point-spread shows. Last Saturday FNN aired a segment by John Patrick, detailing which way to bet the Rams-Colts game. Problem No.1: that game had been played six days earlier. Problem No. 2: Patrick suggested that the Colts, getting six points, were the best play of the week; the Rams had won by 14.
Giants Minus 2 ½: The ‘82 Redskins meet the ‘86 Giants Sunday at 8:15 p.m. on “NFL Dream Season,” ESPN’s contrived and bogus computer/video tomfoolery that matches top teams of the last 40 years.
Orioles Options: If the AL East race is undecided, the Orioles’ season closer Sunday in Toronto will be televised by both ABC and HTS at 3 p.m. But if the division is clinched before Sunday, the game will start at 1:30 and only be on HTS. If a one-game playoff is needed Monday, NBC would televise.
Fit For A King: CNN and Mutual broadcaster Larry King will be the anchor for TBS’s coverage of the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle.
Marvelous Rug: On a recent “Remote Control,” the MTV game show, one of the categories was “Toupee or Not Toupee.” The first selection was NBC sportscaster Marv Albert and a contestant correctly answered, “Toupee.”
— Norman Chad