MLBEI and Territorial rights

[Tarver]

Maybe during Spring Training the issue is how close you are to Florida or Arizona (whichever those teams train in), not Houston or Cincinnati.

 

sadly, no. for some strange and inunderstandable reason, tennessee is considered the reds market.

 

who knew?

 

oh, yeah, try living here in louisville. this is NOT a reds town, despite the bats being the AAA affiliate. i know of more cubs, sox (both), and (explitive deleted) cardinal fans here than reds fans and yet we are stuck with reds broadcasts over the cubs games. and yes that is important. do any one of you want to listen to 9 innings of jeff brantley and thom brennamen female doging about the cubs and/or cubs fans 3 game straight? its bad enough that if i ever wanted to catch the game on radio, bitter old marty brennamen comes out the speakers.

 

thankfully when the games are on wgn, they aren't blacked out here (strangely enough). it's only when the games are on espn or tbs when i really don't have much of a choice.

Memphis is considered a:

 

Reds market

Cardinals market

Astros market

 

So I get those games blacked out any time the Cubs play them. It is maddening.

 

How in the hell is Memphis considered a Reds or Astros market? That's probably the biggest Cardinals town outside of StL.

 

But the whole thing is absurd, period. Let fans follow who they want. Be happy that they're watching MLB instead of the innumerable other options available.

[otis89]

The fix seems so simple. Whichever RSN is considered your "home" channel, that should be the only one that is blacked out on EI.

 

How about NO blackouts? I am so sick of getting screwed out of being able to watch the vast majority of Cubs game because I am in the Cubs' market, yet I DON'T get CSN. This stupidity has got to end!

[Derwood]

The fix seems so simple. Whichever RSN is considered your "home" channel, that should be the only one that is blacked out on EI.

 

But I guess I've never lived anywhere but near a large MLB city. Do folks in TN and mid-Ohio have just one RSN? Or do you have one at all?

 

Here, I have FSN Ohio and FSN Cincinnati, but am also blacked out for Pittsburgh, even though DirecTV tells me I can't have FSN Pittsburgh (MLB's rules aren't their problem, they tell me)

[RedIvyCub]

Maybe during Spring Training the issue is how close you are to Florida or Arizona (whichever those teams train in), not Houston or Cincinnati.

 

sadly, no. for some strange and inunderstandable reason, tennessee is considered the reds market.

 

who knew?

 

oh, yeah, try living here in louisville. this is NOT a reds town, despite the bats being the AAA affiliate. i know of more cubs, sox (both), and (explitive deleted) cardinal fans here than reds fans and yet we are stuck with reds broadcasts over the cubs games. and yes that is important. do any one of you want to listen to 9 innings of jeff brantley and thom brennamen female doging about the cubs and/or cubs fans 3 game straight? its bad enough that if i ever wanted to catch the game on radio, bitter old marty brennamen comes out the speakers.

 

thankfully when the games are on wgn, they aren't blacked out here (strangely enough). it's only when the games are on espn or tbs when i really don't have much of a choice.

 

WGN games aren't blacked out anywhere. They pay the "superstation tax" for each game that they show. As MLB has found other ways to get money off of having out of market fans (through MLB EI and MLB.tv), that superstation tax has gone up which is why you no longer see Braves games on TBS and WGN has slowly but steadily cut the number of games that are shown.

 

Very true. This is why some games were moved to CLTV about a decade ago and this is the reason for some games being on WCIU. Cubs and Sox are the only team paying this tax now and it has increased immensely since its inception. So don't be surprised that even though Ricketts is a huge fan of this team that you see less or no games on WGN America in the future. They could also do like they do with the Bulls and Hawks and only put the games on the WGN local feed hence reducing the Superstation tax. I never understood why the Cubs just took the rap for reducing the number of games without explaining the reason to the fan base. If people realized this, they could be mad at the right people.

[abuck1220]

no free preview on directv??? lame.

[Derwood]

no free preview on directv??? lame.

 

Someone else was saying they had it. Maybe the HD channels are turned off.

[tfarks]

I was thinking about getting this through Time Warner but after reading this and remembering how bad the restrictions are I'm not going through with it. I think I'm just gonna buy a pc input for my tv and hope I can find enough online feeds to make due.