Today is the 52nd anniversary of what I used to consider the greatest radio station on the planet in its best format:
5 comments on Presty the DJ for May 2
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Tim Nerenz has done a radical thing for the second time with state job numbers: He added them up.
The first headline in the Google list told the whole story: “Government Data Shows Wisconsin Leads Nation In Job Loss Under Walker.”
The paragraphs that follow cite a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report that says Wisconsin lost 23,900 jobs over the past 12 months, more than any other state in the union, and then the article quotes numerous opponents of Governor Walker who demand that he be recalled because of it.
Actually, I was hoping to avoid yet another swim in the murky waters of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, but since none of my fellow countrypersons whose crushing student loan debt bought them a degree in journalism seem inclined to use it for the five minutes it takes to discover a fly in any BLS ointment, I passed on the SNL musical guest last night and contradicted the BLS headline with its own data. You can fact-check me yourself; here is the link …
According to BLS – not me – the number of persons employed in Wisconsin in March of 2011 was 2,838,145. And according the BLS – not me – the number of persons employed in Wisconsin in March of 2012 was 2,856,643. My calculator says that is an INCREASE of 18,498.
My Excel spreadsheet says that is an INCREASE of 18,498. Arithmetic by hand says that is an INCREASE of 18,498. Slide rule, abacus, ponies stomping – anyway you count ‘em up, that is 18,498 more people are working now than a year ago, not less. When do I get my Pulitzer Prize?
While we are at it, the BLS – not me – says that during Walker’s first 15 months in office the number of people working in Wisconsin has INCREASED by 23,575. And BLS – not me – says that during his predecessor’s first 15 months in office, with a national economy growing at more than double the current rate, the number of people working in Wisconsin DECREASED by 143.
Don’t shoot the messenger, especially now that we have concealed carry and you never know which messengers will shoot back. Did we recall Governor Jim Doyle after a year? No, that was a different time; nearly a decade before we lost our minds. Should we have recalled Doyle in 2004? Absolutely not – he won an election, and elections should mean something in a democracy.
My point is not that Walker’s policies have led to high rates of job creation; 23,575 more people working is anemic and we need to do a lot better than that. My point is that the professional axe-grinders would like you to believe BLS data is some Biblical truth whenever a slice of it can be carved out to support their narratives, but a BLS headline is not truth. They do statistics, not truths, and there are limits to statistics.
If you want to go cherry-picking BLS data, Milwaukee is pretty gruesome; so whose fault is that – Barrett, Abele, Walker, Obama, or whoever is running the U.N. these days? Dane County is not exactly frackin’ North Dakota, so which Madison politician wants to fall on their sword for that? What next – should we go ward by ward and start recalling aldermen?
The fact is that none of our elected officials who promise to create jobs in the private sector have any say in the matter; politicians can only put up or tear down barriers to job creation.
If you want to judge Governor Walker, or any other politician for that matter, on job creation, then list the barriers he has erected to private sector job creation down one column, and list the barriers he has removed down a second column. As a businessman and job creator, I can tell you that one of my lists is substantially longer than the other, but everyone is entitled to their own list and their own opinion. …
Still think you know how many jobs there actually are in Wisconsin? And if any of you student-debt-laden journalism majors want to do a little investigative journalism, why don’t you go figure out why one floor of the BLS – not me – says that 2,856,643 people are employed in Wisconsin today while another floor of the BLS – not me – estimates there are only 2,730,100 jobs?
How could that possibly be? That is 126,543 more people working than there are jobs to employ them; do people think they are working when they are not? The data comes from the same federal Department, same agency, same website, same web page, same table even – and only 3 rows apart.
And which of these two conflicting pictures – 24,000 fewer jobs or 18,000 more people working – is consistent with the other BLS data that shows the number of unemployed Wisconsinites dropping from 232,167 to 207,527 over the past year? Which one is consistent with the unemployment rate dropping to 6.8%? …
It didn’t take much work to find the information that I have presented here; any 9th grader could have done it in a half hour with a little encouragement. So ask yourself why you are just reading this now for the first time. Better yet, ask your favorite news outlets why they didn’t tell you about employment going up under Governor Walker, since that is what BLS – I repeat, not me – says.
This is the sort of thing that makes you think the media is in the tank for whoever the not-Walker is. (Beyond the ethical violation of signing political petitions, that is.) This is also an example of lazy journalism in accepting whatever the authority says without independently checking it out. And in both cases, those journalists who try to be fair and as objective as humanly possible get painted by the same broad brush.
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James Pethokoukis believes the presidential election might be decided between our 20th wedding anniversary and Halloween, because of this chart:
This may be as good as it gets. Sputter-speed growth of around 2% and a moribund labor market. As the above chart suggests, the recovery is losing momentum. …
Wait, the second half will be “more difficult” than the first? We might be lucky to have 2% growth in the first half. The econ team at Citigroup seems equally as sober: “The 1Q GDP data, a month of rising jobless claims, and likely back-to-back moderate gains in non-farm employment should dampen remaining optimism that 2013 would be the year of decisive growth acceleration in the U.S. Why should any other quarter in 2012 be markedly better than 1Q?”
And given the reluctance of big banks to make U.S. recession calls, I have to think that plenty of these folks are worrying we might get a negative quarter at some point this year. Imagine the political shock wave if, say, the third quarter dipped even a smidgen. To use President Obama’s favorite analogy, the U.S. economy would be back in the ditch. And that report would be released by the Commerce Department on Oct. 26, just 11 days before the election.
Slowing economic growth is incompatible with reducing the unemployment rate below Obama’s promised ceiling of 8 percent. (The last unemployment report before the election is Nov. 2.) Then there’s the issue of gas prices, which bumped against the $4-per-gallon ceiling well before the summer driving season. Gas prices over $4 per gallon are incompatible with positive economic growth.
If all that plays out as predicted, no voter will be able to answer this famous pre-election question in the affirmative:
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The number one single today in 1965:
Today in 1970, the Jimi Hendrix Experience played the first of its 13-show U.S. tour at the Milwaukee Auditorium:
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You may not have noticed that the Milwaukee Bucks were eliminated from the playoffs last week. The NBA playoffs began Saturday once again without the Bucks.
Today is the 41st anniversary of the Bucks’ only NBA title, clinched with a four-game NBA Finals sweep over the Baltimore (now Washington) Bullets (now Wizards).
The Bucks’ only other NBA Finals appearance came three years later, a seven-game loss to Boston despite the classic Game 6 double-overtime win:
(CBS’ play-by-play guy is, believe it or not, Pat Summerall.)
The Bucks were also good in the late ’70s and much of the ’80s, with coach Don Nelson, forward Marques Johnson and then Terry Cummings, and guards Sidney Moncrief, Brian Winters and Paul Pressey.
In those days, the Bucks were arguably the fourth best team in the NBA, behind Boston, Philadelphia and the Los Angeles Lakers. Unfortunately, the Bucks could never get past the Celtics and 76ers to get into the NBA Finals in those years. Their main problem seemed to be their lack of in-his-prime center; the ’80s Bucks teams first featured Bob Lanier, then Jack Sikma, both of whose best days were with their previous teams.
The Bucks’ last shot at NBA relevance was in 2001 with George Karl as their coach, guards Sam Cassell and Ray Allen, forward Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson, and sixth-man Tim Thomas. (Robinson was the third of four Bucks who were the number one pick in the NBA draft, which tells you all you need to know about how those teams were.) The 2001 Bucks had the Eastern Conference’s second best record, and indeed they were second-best in the East, losing a seven-game conference final series to, once again, the 76ers.
Following the Bucks has been frustrating under the ownership of U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl (D–Wisconsin). During the ’80s when Kohl bought the team, he was seen as the franchise’s savior, with his purchase compelling Lloyd and Jane Pettit to donate a new arena to the city, the Bradley Center. But Kohl and Nelson reportedly clashed, and Nelson departed, as did, for the next decade, winning teams. Karl came along and the Bucks started winning, but then a 2001 trade Karl lobbied for destroyed the team’s chemistry, and so Karl left.
Since Karl’s departure after the 2002–03 season, the Bucks have had three playoff seasons, each of which ended with first-round playoff losses. The 2011–12 season was the second in a row with no playoff berth. For the past decade, the Bucks have changed general managers, coaches and players — T.J. Ford, Michael Redd, Andrew Bogut, Richard Jefferson, John Salmons — with no lasting effect.
In addition to the Bucks’ on-court failures, the Bradley Center, which was a palace when it opened, now is one of the oldest arenas in the NBA, and, as is usually the case, nearly impossible to upgrade to 21st-century standards. (And little money to do so, since the Pettits’ generous gift didn’t include any funds for capital improvements.) Ironically, the Milwaukee Arena, which the Bradley Center was supposed to replace, is still in operation as the home of UW–Milwaukee basketball and Milwaukee’s most successful sports franchise, the Wave.
Even when I saw a game at the Bradley Center a few years after it opened, it was obvious that unless you have seats in the lower section between the basketball end lines (where our seats were not), the view is not very good. In retrospect, as demonstrated by the Kohl Center on the other end of Interstate 94, the Bradley Center probably should have been designed with basketball sightlines instead of hockey sightlines, given that the Bucks draw much better than the Admirals, which were owned by the Pettits. The Palace at Auburn Hills, where the Detroit Pistons play, opened the same year, but it appears to have been designed better, given that the Pistons are fine with it. (On the other hand, the Power Balance Pavilion in Sacramento opened the same year, and, yes, the Kings want a new arena.)
Thanks in large part to their arena situation, the Bucks (which are Milwaukee’s second NBA franchise, the first behind the Hawks, who moved from the Tri-, now Quad, Cities of Iowa and Illinois to Milwaukee on their way to St. Louis and then Atlanta) are considered one of the lowest-value franchises in the NBA. (Forbes magazine estimates the average NBA franchise value at $393 million, but the Bucks are estimated at $268 million, dead last in the NBA.) That makes them a tantalizing target to be sold and moved to a market that wants the NBA back, like Seattle (whose Sonics are now the Oklahoma City Thunder) or Kansas City (whose Kings, formerly shared with Omaha, are now in Sacramento). Kohl was about to sell the team to Michael Jordan in 2003 when Kohl changed his mind.
One reads a lot of sentiment along the lines of if the Bucks want an arena, let them pay for it. Well, thanks in large part to this state’s perennially poor business climate and in large part to the greatly increased expense of pro sports franchise ownership and operation, this state has no one who comes immediately to mind rich enough (not to mention civic-minded enough) to step in for Kohl and buy the Bucks and/or step in for the Pettits and build another arena for the Bucks, the Admirals, the indoor-soccer Wave, and the Marquette Warriors/Golden Eagles. Who replaced the Seligs as owners of the Brewers? Californian Mark Attanasio, who thankfully appears to be committed to keeping the Brewers in Milwaukee. There is no guarantee that there’s another Attanasio to keep the Bucks in Milwaukee.
The Bucks are a case of economic and political realities crashing into each other. By the standard of pro sports economics, yes, the Bucks need a new arena. For proof, look at the fortunes of the Brewers after Miller Park and the Packers after the early-2000s Lambeau Field renovations. (Or, for that matter, the football Badgers after the Camp Randall Stadium renovations.) Today’s sports arenas are built to extract the maximum amount of revenue from ticket-buyers and the maximum amount of money from spectators. The Bradley Center’s shortcomings are the reason why the Bucks are at the bottom of the NBA in franchise value.
On the other hand, thanks in large part to having the fourth highest state and local taxes in the nation, there is great resistance to using tax dollars for a new Bucks arena. Looking at the Comments section in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel‘s editorial on a replacement arena proves that. (For one thing, unlike the Packers and recently the Brewers, the Bucks have not marketed themselves outside greater Milwaukee.) Milwaukee’s non-vibrant economy under Mayor Tom Barrett (who wants to foist his definition of economic development on the rest of the state, but that’s another subject) and its leadership, if you want to call it that, of the state’s social pathologies makes some think spending money on an arena represents misplaced priorities.
If you think about it, though, the 0.1-percent sales tax increase to fund Miller Park is about as non-onerous as a tax increase gets, and the benefits of having a ballpark in which games are guaranteed to be played regardless of weather are undeniable. I have a hard time believing 47 percent of Brown County residents voted against the 0.5-percent sales tax increase to fund the renovations for the stadium of the most recognizable thing in northeast Wisconsin. And in both cases, the sales tax increases are designed to sunset when the stadiums are paid off. Tax increases should be opposed when they’re (1) not needed, (2) funding wasteful or inappropriate government spending, and/or (3) designed to be permanent, or as permanent as anything in politics.
If the Bucks leave Milwaukee (and reading this makes it hard to think that won’t happen), 42 Bucks home games go away. That means a drastic cut in Bradley Center jobs, less business for downtown Milwaukee restaurants (which means less sales tax revenue from same), less business for Milwaukee hotels from visiting teams (which means less room tax revenue from same), and more than a dozen high-income Milwaukee-area residents who won’t be living, buying things and paying taxes in the Milwaukee area. There’s also the media attention that Milwaukee gets every night on cable TV and every day in newspapers and online because of the Bucks that won’t be happening without the Bucks.
All of that is the future of Milwaukee without the Bucks.
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A reader who sent a video suggestion last week sends another, and this one should make you even more appalled:
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The number one single today in 1960:
The number one British album today in 1966 was the Rolling Stones’ “Aftermath”:
The number one single today in 1966:
Today in 1970, Twiggs Lyndon, the road manager of the Allman Brothers Band, was arrested for murder following the fatal stabbing of a club manager during an argument over a contract.
At the murder trial, Lyndon’s attorneys claimed temporary insanity, saying that touring with the Allman Brothers would make anyone insane.
Lyndon was acquitted.
The number one single today in 1977:
The number one single today in 1983:
Today in 2005, the Dave Matthews Band paid $200,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a group of tourists on a Chicago River boat tour, after the driver of the band’s bus unloaded its waste tank onto the boat.
Birthdays begin with Johnny Horton:
Willie Nelson:
Don’t fall asleep listening to Santo and Johnny, because Johnny Farina’s birthday is today:
Robert Velline, better known as Bobby Vee, whose career began upon Buddy Holly’s death:
Wayne Kramer of MC5:
Chris Henderson played guitar for 3 Doors Down:
Two deaths of note today: McKinley Morganfield, better known as Muddy Waters, in 1983 …
… and Darrell Sweet, drummer for Nazareth, before a show in New Albany, Ind., in 1999:
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Today in 1976, after a concert in Memphis, Bruce Springsteen scaled the walls of Graceland … where he was arrested by a security guard.
Today in 2003, a $5 million lawsuit filed by a personal injury lawyer against John Fogerty was dismissed.
The lawyer claimed he suffered hearing loss at a 1997 Fogerty concert.
The judge ruled the lawyer assumed the risk of hearing loss by attending the concert. The lawyer replied, “What?”
Birthdays start with Jean “Toots” Thielemans, whose harmonica skills got noticed by Mr. William Joel:
Carl Gardner sang for the Coasters:
Who is Carol LoTempo? You may have known her as April Stevens:
Manfred Mann bassist Klaus Voorman:
Tammi Terrell:Tommy James of the Shondells, whose dog Sam ate purple flowers:
Those of us from the ’80s may not know the name of Debora Iyall, until the words “Romeo Void” are mentioned:
One death of note today in 1990: Floyd Butler of the Friends of Distinction:
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Today in 1968, “Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,” opened on Broadway.
“Hair” closed in 1972 after 1,729 performances.
The number one album today in 1973 would be on the charts for 741 weeks:
The number one single today in 1979:
Today in 1982, the California State Assembly consumer protection committee heard testimony that if you play Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” backwards, you hear “I sing because I live with Satan. The Lord turns me off, there’s no escaping it. Here’s to my sweet Satan, whose power is Satan. He will give you 666. I live for Satan.”
Can anyone with auditory dyslexia confirm this?
Birthdays begin with John Wolters, drummer for Dr. Hook:
Eddie Jobson played keyboards and violin for Roxy Music:
Two deaths of note from car crashes today: Tommy Caldwell, bass player for the Marshall Tucker Band, in 1980 …
… and Steve Currie of T. Rex in 1981:
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If you needed any sign that pro football has passed Major League Baseball as the national pastime, check your favorite media outlet this weekend for its coverage of the NFL draft.
Training camps won’t open for three months, and the first games of the season are 4½ months away. Baseball has been under way for a month, and the NFL draft — players who may or may not even play in the NFL — will be on center stage. Not baseball, not the NBA playoffs, not the NHL playoffs.
Baseball is a great sport that is poorly run. The NFL is the greatest professional league in the history of sports. Even when baseball does something attempting to be innovative, it never seems to come off as well as MLB management thinks it should. Nearly as many fans hate interleague play as like it. (And with the Houston Astros moving to the American League to create two 15-team leagues, there will be an interleague game every day starting next year.) Baseball expanded its playoffs in 1994, but notice how many empty seats you see at Division Series games.
At the risk of sounding like Rex Harrison in “My Fair Lady” (“Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?”), to stop its popularity slide (baseball arguably is now the fourth most popular sport behind the NFL, the NBA and stock car racing), baseball needs to be run more like the NFL where appropriate. The challenge is to fix the things wrong with baseball while keeping what’s right about baseball.
Obviously there are some insurmountable differences between the NFL and MLB. One reason for the drama of the NFL season is that it is just 16 games long. It’s hard to say one game is of critical importance when that one game is one of 162 baseball games in a season. The NFL also moved playoff games to night a decade ago because bad weather makes football more compelling to watch. In bad weather, baseball either isn’t played or is a miserable experience to sit through.
Consider this: NFL games are almost always sellouts, because games that do not sell out do not get televised in the home team’s TV market. Having 81 home games gives teams the chance to sell more tickets, and fans who don’t go to games don’t buy food, drinks and souvenirs in the ballpark, and taking more money out of fans’ pockets is what the new stadiums, including Lambeau Field and Miller Park, are designed to do.
In 2011, four baseball teams — Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco and Minnesota — sold 99 percent or more of their available tickets. (That comes from multiplying their stadium capacity by 81 home games. The Phillies actually sold 104 percent of their available tickets.) Two more teams — the Cubs and Brewers — sold 90 percent of their tickets, which would be similar to playing at Lambeau Field with 7,000 empty seats. On average, MLB teams sold 69 percent of their available tickets. Four teams — Seattle, Florida, Toronto and Baltimore — didn’t even sell half of their available tickets.
Baseball’s problem starts at the top, with its commissioner, former Brewers owner Bud Selig. Obviously Selig deserves credit as an owner for getting the one-season Seattle Pilots moved to Milwaukee, and for campaigning to get Miller Park built. Selig also has made worthwhile changes as commissioner, merging power formerly in the two leagues into the commissioner’s office in areas like umpiring. Baseball appears to be better marketed than it used to be (and the Brewers formerly were the worst), although MLB marketing still doesn’t hold a candle to the NFL.
As an authority figure, however, Selig pales in comparison to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and NBA commissioner David Stern. Calling him a car salesman (he was the owner of Selig Chevrolet) is an insult because car salespeople have personalities. Selig is not dynamic as a public speaker, and he doesn’t come across particularly well in the media, unlike his NFL counterparts. (Goodell is the second commissioner after Pete Rozelle, who was the best commissioner in the history of sports. Rozelle’s training was in public relations.) Maybe Selig is great behind the scenes, but you have to lead in public too.
Baseball would be better off with a more media-friendly commissioner. But baseball would also be better off with a commissioner who didn’t come from ownership. (Rozelle’s two successors both worked for the NFL before becoming commissioner.) Owners run baseball much more so than owners run the NFL, and the NFL has unquestionably been run better than baseball over at least my lifetime, and probably before that. (When baseball owners disparage themselves as not the sharpest tools in the shed, you know you have problems.)
The biggest difference, and the biggest thing baseball needs to tackle, is competitive balance, where every team’s fans can believe that their teams can get to the World Series when they’re making their season ticket orders. There’s a difference between success due to your work (for instance, the St. Louis Cardinals) and being able to wave money around to buy who you want (the Yankees). When the baseball season began a month ago, several teams basically fell out of contention after Opening Day. Baseball fans are more fickle than football fans, in part because tickets are easier to come by with 81-game home seasons. But other the Cubs and Red Sox, whose ballparks have a lot to do with their appeal, most teams’ attendance is based on how the team does, or how the team did last year.
The genius of the NFL under Rozelle and a few influential owners was that they realized that the most important thing about the NFL is the game. When George Steinbrenner owned the New York Yankees, he was concerned about the Yankees, not the game; he couldn’t have cared less about the Brewers, Twins, Indians, or other small-market teams. (In contrast, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones will never become the commissioner of the NFL, thank heavens.) NFL owners figured out that their competition was not each other, but other ways to spend the entertainment dollar, even beyond other sports.
As a result, the NFL shares revenues more broadly than baseball. Both leagues share national broadcast revenue, but baseball broadcast revenue is more important, and more imbalanced, than in the NFL. (That directly affects what you will read in the next paragraph.) Perhaps the mix of revenues between home teams and visiting teams needs to be nudged more in the visitors’ direction to give the home teams incentive to get more fans in the stands.
The NFL also has a hard salary cap, which baseball has never been able to implement thanks to the desires of high-income owners to be able to buy winning teams. USA Today reports that as of Opening Day, MLB payrolls range from $197,962,289 (the Yankees) to $55,244,700 (San Diego). The Yankees’ payroll is so out of whack compared to the rest of the league that the average of those two payrolls — $126,603,490 — is exceeded only by the payrolls of Boston, Philadelphia, the Los Angeles Angels and Detroit. The Yankees’ payroll is 3½ times the payroll of the Padres. Guess which team has a better chance to get to the playoffs.
A huge difference between the NFL and baseball is that the NFL is unafraid to fine-tune its rules to improve their product’s fan appeal. The NFL started liberalizing its passing rules in the 1970s, and fan interest has increased steadily since then. Scoring is up, and yet games are not dragging past three hours unless the officials are flag-happy. In the past week, the NFL has considered eliminating kickoffs (because of injuries on kickoff coverage) and the Pro Bowl. Earlier this year, the NFL changed the regular-season overtime rule to match the postseason overtime rule, giving teams one guaranteed possession in overtime.
The last major rule change in baseball was the designated hitter, and whether you like it or hate it, it is ridiculous that half of baseball uses it and the other half does not. That is comparable to half of NBA teams using the three-point shot and the other half not using it.
Then there’s the issue of the slow … pace … of … the … games, particularly … in … the … postseason. The last game of the 1960 World Series, a dramatic 10–9 Pittsburgh win over the damn Yankees on a Bill Mazeroski ninth-inning home run, took 2 hours 36 minutes to play. In contrast, the shortest 2011 World Series game was 3 hours 4 minutes, and two of the games took more than four hours. (Which, in the case of 11-inning two-last-at-bat-comeback Game 6, was forgivable.) Games are dragging to the point where nine-inning postseason games run four hours, and yet baseball refuses to do anything to speed up the game. (Like, for instance, requiring umpires to use a standard strike zone instead of their own interpretation, or calling balls on pitchers who can’t throw a pitch within 10 seconds or strikes on batters who adjust every last piece of their own equipment out of the batter’s box. And speaking of umpires, notice that NFL officials are never accused of arrogance?)
To show how hidebound baseball is, the discussion for a few years has been whether to retain the 162-game season or go back to the 154-game season last seen in 1960. Yes, the world will change direction around its axis based on the fate of 10 days of the schedule.
The more radical move would be to significantly cut the schedule — say, down to 120 to 140 games over a season shorter by a month or more. Baseball is not meant to be played in weather more like winter than spring anyway. (Not a problem for the Brewers, but their first series at Wrigley Field was played in weather more suitable for a Bears game.) Imagine having the regular season over by the start of the NFL season, playing pre-World Series games in September, and then playing the World Series in early October. (The latter is how baseball was scheduled in the pre-League Championship Series days, when World Series games were played in the daytime and fans didn’t have to get out their football outerwear to watch.
A similarly radical move would be to take a page out of NFL scheduling. Instead of playing the same number of games against teams outside your division, baseball could rearrange itself so teams with the same divisional finish played each other more often. The better a team is one year, the more difficult (i.e. games played against good teams) the schedule would be the next season.
Baseball’s TV arrangement doesn’t exactly generate interest in the game either. The current TV contract places most of the regular season (except Fox Saturday games, which at least now are each Saturday of the season) and too much of the postseason on cable. A lot of homes still don’t have cable or satellite, which means fans got to see two series of the seven-series postseason, and, in Wisconsin, not a single Brewers postseason game on over-the-air TV.
Fox has been baseball’s exclusive over-the-air broadcaster since 2001. ESPN and TBS have carried games since 2007. In contrast, the NFL is on Fox, CBS and NBC, plus ESPN, and any ESPN game is carried on local TV in the teams’ markets. I’m not critical of Fox’s coverage (although announcer Joe Buck sometimes sounds disinterested), but I think baseball would be better served by having a second over-the-air network taking TBS’ place when TV contracts expire after the 2013 season. Either that, or playoff games broadcast on cable should be locally telecast since most fans don’t have access to postseason tickets.
There is a difference between doing things way they always have been because that’s the right way to do it, and doing things way they always have been because they’ve always done it that way. There is a difference between respecting tradition and being glued to tradition. The NFL is the former, and Major League Baseball needs to be less of the latter.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 