Extra Innings to Direct TV

Major League Baseball owners have always been quick to grasp the idea of making a buck. Traditions have been giving way to profit in ways large and small over the past years from the demise of double-headers and afternoon World Series games to the abomination that is November baseball. Now comes yet another profit induced indignity to be heaped upon the long-suffering baseball fan, well, at least the cable television served baseball fan.

All signs now point to Major League Baseball following the path first laid out by the NFL and moving its Extra Innings package of virtually unlimited games broadcast with local announcers exclusively to Direct TV, in return for a mere $700 million. For baseball fans without access to Direct TV or who choose not to purchase it, the only alternative is MLB.tv, the online access to every major league game for $100 for the season. Of course, you do have to watch it on your computer. So, most people will be stuck with the choice of staying with cable and no out of market games or switching to Direct TV. Fans, baseball really doesn't care about you, just your money.

Direct TV has decided that sports is the niche that will be the defining factor to pull people away from cable. With baseball in hand, it will now have exclusive packages in baseball, football and college basketball (the Final Four and the Big Ten Network) to entice people. In addition, this summer or fall, at the latest, Direct TV expects to have two additional satellites launched enabling it to begin broadcasting 150 national High Definition channels and 1500 local ones. These two moves mark the direction of its push for customer expansion and clearly show the direction it is taking in marketing as we all know that sports is what drives HD viewing. Extra Innings may be crucial to its marketing push. Total viewership of this package last year ran about 750,000 and it's by no means certain how many of these Direct TV needs to keep for the project to be deemed a success, nevertheless I would expect hundreds of thousands of new subscribers as a result with them just in time to upgrade to all of those new HD channels.

For Baseball, Direct TV would be the logical jumping off point for the Baseball Channel that MLB has been talking about forever. It is something that supposedly has been in the works for the at least the last three years but we have yet to see. Baseball has a large year-round programming inventory, due to its large minor league system, the well developed winter league system as well as leagues in South America, Japan and the Caribbean, yet MLB has been unable to pull off a Baseball Channel, while we have both the NFL Network and the NBA Channel, with much more limited programming bases and fan support. The only explanation I can see is Commissioner office incompetence but maybe John Malone and the folks at Direct TV can fix that.