FOX, TBS sign baseball deals

from broadcasting and cable

Fox Continues To Play Ball
By Ben Grossman

Major League Baseball has scheduled a 5:30 ET press conference at
Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, the site of tonight's All-Star Game, at which
it is expected to announce its new television deal.

Under the new seven-year deals, to begin in 2007, Fox is expected to
keep the World Series, one of the two League Championship Series
(LCS), a Saturday game of the week for 26 weeks and the All-Star Game.
Fox will alternate between the American League Championship Series and
National League Championship Series each year.

The network will no longer carry the first round of the playoffs (the
divisional series) and one LCS beginning in 2007.

Turner Sports is expected to pick up coverage of the divisional series
for both the American League and National League. It will put the
games on TBS, with the ability to use TNT for overflow programming as
it does with its NBA coverage.

Tony Calguire...

Any provision in this deal for hometown OTA rebroadcast of the cable
games for the cities involved in the divisional series?

evwill...

No, there is not. The divisional games will be exclusive to TBS/TNT.
Non-cable/satellite subscribers will be out of luck.

Everett W.

Anthony D. Langford...

Didn't these games air on ESPN last year? Though with TBS picking them
up, even less people will be able to see them. It's interesting. I
never saw TBS has a factor in this. I wonder how they'll pick the

evwill...

The divisional games have been split between Fox and ESPN. Much like
the NFL season though, ESPN has been obligated to syndicate its MLB
playoff game coverage with selected broadcast stations in the home
markets of the respective teams.

TBS will not be under any such obligation with its playoff coverage.

Everett W.

Sunday game? My guess is that it'll be a Yankees or Red Sox game,
like with most of ESPN games or FOX's Saturday game.

As part of the deal beginning next year, Turner will add a Sunday
regular-season game of the week as well as an All-Star Game selection

Mills...

This better not mean that MLB Extra Innings subscribers are gonna get
blacked out of all the Sunday afternoon games the way we do now on all
the Saturday afternoon games when there is a regional FOX game of the
week.

show. This year, Turner also gets rights to any regular-season
tie-breaker games that arise if two potential playoff teams finish
even in the standings.

MLB is said to still be in negotiations over the remaining League
Championship Series, the announcement of which may or may not be a
part of today's press conference. Turner is said to be the front
runner, with ESPN also a possibility.

Fox's current deal included the entire package of regular-season and
post-season games, at the cost of $2.6 billion over the past six
years.

The network has lost $200 million over the course of the deal and News
Corp. President Peter Chernin had said recently Fox would walk away
from the entire package if they couldn't make the economics work.

A source with knowledge of the deal says Fox expects to make money on
their new deal.