[MicroBob]

I'm reminded of the early days of baseball on radio.

Even through the 50's I believe different teams in NY and elsewhere considered it a really bad idea to broadcast their home games because it would hurt attendance.
they were afriad too many fans would think, "Why bother going to the game? I can just stay home and listen to it and find out who wins."

Eventually they realised that being the first to find out who wins is not the only reason people attend games. They go for the fun and the atmosphere and to be there live.
The smart teams figured out that broadcasting the home games could actually help their team as it effectively served as a 3-hour advertisement for their product and could encourage people to come to the ballpark.


I just think more exposure is better. Limiting yourself by having a majority of the games played at the exact same time and blacking-out various markets and forcing them to watch bad matchups because their local team is playing just feels so old-fashioned to me and unwise.

In my area today, my Fox affiliate was stuck showing me the damn ATL/TB game which was ridiculously bad.
It's about 85-0 with 2 minutes left and is dragging on and on...but then ATL did score in the last minute to break up the shutout. Oh goodie. Glad I saw that instead of something else.