With a little time on my hands (oh, like I’m going to study EVERY single waking minute), it’s time to get some things off my chest.
Let’s start with the catalyst: ESPN.com. As a consumer of their product, I feel I have the right to gripe about how they provide their service. They’ve got a nice little money-grab going on with so-called "insider" subscription content. At first, I had no problem with this, because "insider" stuff was limited to the arcane ramblings of the fringe element and toss-off material from their main writers. Stuff like how it would be better to start player X tomorrow against New York because in 1995 he had a 4-5 game against a lefty with the same stuff as the pitcher New York is starting.
Then the writters started blogging, and a handful of those were subscription limited. Then a few more regular articles were shifted over. Now a couple of their headling guys write virtually nothing but subscription articles. The worst part, and the element that raises my hackles, is that at first, they clearly and obviously marked every article with a cute little icon, so I knew not to click on them, but not so now. About every third article I want to read is subscription limited. And more of their regular, weekly articles are becoming subscription limited. And I’m logging in less and less to ESPN.com because of it. If they want to move to a subscription based online source, that’s fine, but you won’t find me tagging along.
Speaking of money-grabs, how about those executives over at Major League Baseball headquarters? After a little ruckus-rousing, we managed to avoid having Extra Innings, MLB’s subscription-based package of providing national access to all the games, moved exclusively to Dish Network (or was it DirecTV? I can’t remember.) They kept it available to cable subscribers who want it. At least for this year…
There is another anti-consumer thing that’s been going on for decades, though, that has long outlasted its usefullness. Unlike professional football, where the league negotiates media deals and controls what games will be seen where, thus keeping fans in home markets from seeing their home teams, MLB has gone the exact opposite direction, so that each team controlls their media rights (with a couple of discrete exceptions, such as when ESPN or Fox wants to broadcast a game nationally). And they control their markets, to a certain extent. This is a good thing, for the most part, but it’s those discrete exceptions that get on my nerves. A big one is national distribution of games is vested exclusively in MLB. So MLB will give a game here or there to Fox or ESPN, but the rest are reserved to its MLB.tv website and the Extra Innings packages. Result? I can’t access MLB’s product when I want to access it! I don’t pay for many subscription services (cell phone is the only one I can think of off the top of my head. Not even cable or internet…) and I’m certainly not going to pay money for 12 games I don’t care about just to see the one game I do care about.
So I thought I had discovered the work-around. A commercial-supported work-around. Yeah, commercials, that stuff that keeps broadcast television "free," and radio genuinely free. Commercials, that give money to the provider of content so I don’t have to. Win-win, I said. But, no! said MLB. See, 99% of radio stations are now streaming their content live over the internet, so they can reach a larger base of listeners and charge more for their advertising. Win-win, I said. But, no! said MLB. Every team has a "radio network," a group of networks that broadcast the games (same two announcers, same feed, different broadcast points). The Cardinals have theirs (and I can hear them on crisp, clear, AM radio here in the Lou), and the Tigers have theirs. Both networks ALSO stream over the internet. I want to listen to Tigers games, the Detroit radio station wants to broadcast them to me. Win-win, I said. But, NO! said MLB. Internet streaming is national broadcast, and MLB controls that, so NONE of the teams is allowed to broadcast its game-feeds over the internet through the radio streams, only through MLB.tv. I once heard a Detroit game over the internet stream, and thought it was the rule, but someone just forgot to turn off the feed. Maybe someone should "forget" to turn off the feed more often, so more fans can access the product MLB is selling. Seems to me that’s the point of commerce. Or maybe that’s just me.
And as if it’s a surprise, MLB.tv is a joint product between MLB and those fine folks in Bristol, Connecticut (that would be ESPN). Trend?
