The Los Angeles Times wants Congress and the FCC to butt out of the negotiations between Major League Baseball (MLB) and DirecTV. On Wednesday, the paper published an editorial saying so in no uncertain terms. By the blustering tone of their commentary, the editors certainly weren’t looking to make friends or woo fans.
Take me out of the ballgame, below the fold.
EDITORIAL
A swing and a miss
Just because Sen. John Kerry can't watch baseball games on demand doesn't mean that it's a federal issue.
March 7, 2007
MEMO TO SEN. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin: Baseball is the national pastime, not the nationalized one.
Kerry and Martin are crying foul over a deal being negotiated by Major League Baseball and DirecTV, the leading satellite service in the country. The agreement would sell the TV rights to "out of m arket" games — the ones played by non-hometown teams — exclusively to DirecTV. The same package is available today to an estimated 75 million subscribers to the various cable TV and satellite systems; the pending deal would cut that number to DirecTV's universe of 15 million customers. At the same time, the deal would create a new, 24-hour baseball channel on DirecTV.
Kerry, playing the populist card like the presidential candidate he used to be, has ginned up a Senate hearing to determine whether Congress should step in. "I have serious problems with any mega-deal that makes it harder for people across the country to follow their favorite baseball team," he said last month. At Kerry's request, Martin launched an inquiry to determine whether new laws were needed to protect fans.
<...>
Nor is there any public entitlement to televised baseball. Yes, fans who want to watch out-of-market games but who aren't DirecTV subscribers would be inconvenienced by the pe nding deal. Those who won't or can't switch to the satellite service can sign up for Major League Baseball's online broadcasts, which the league says will have the same picture quality as conventional TV. Of course, the webcasts wouldn't deliver the same experience unless viewers had a high-speed Internet line and a PC connected to their TV. Everyone else would have to settle for watching games on their computers or not watching them at all.
Is this a bad thing for fans? Probably. Is it a bad thing for the game? That's for the league to decide, not Congress or the FCC. The proposed deal is similar to the exclusive ones DirecTV has struck with the NFL and NASCAR, neither of which brought down Washington's regulatory fist. Kerry and Martin should stay in the bleachers and let the business of baseball operate like a business.
Think about this comment: "and let the business of baseball operate like a business."
If baseball wants to "operate like a business," then it should give up its special, unique exemption from the anti-trust laws. Baseball has been flouting this privilege for years. Take a look at these examples of how MLB has operated under this special exemption, from a 2001 statement by Congressman John Conyers:
CONYERS BLAMES BASEBALL FOR CREATING THEIR OWN ANTITRUST PROBLEM
<...>
"I am here today to tell you, Mr. Selig, that baseball's antitrust exemption should be repealed. It may not happen this year or even this Congress, but one way or another, baseball's antitrust exemption – an historical anomaly which cannot be justified on any economic or legal grounds – will be eliminated.
The blame for this repeal will not lie with the players, the fans, or the Congress. It will lie with Major League Baseball, which by its actions has tarnished our great national pastime and in effect, lost the right to its own exemption.
Baseball lost the right to its exemption when they treated Curt Flood like a piece of property, leading to a long and unnecessary legal fight and the ruin of a good man's career.
Baseball lost the right to its exemption when the owners colluded among themselves to reduce free agent salaries and were forced to pay a record 280 million dollars in damages.
Baseball lost the right to its exemption with their unacceptable record of minority hiring – no minority owners, and only a single minority general manager.
Baseball lost the right to its exemption when they unceremoniously dumped Faye Vincent as Commissioner, when he tried in vain to put the public interest ahead of the owners' private interest.
Baseball lost the right to its exemption by tolerating eight work stoppages in the last 30 years, more than every other professional sport combined, including, in 1994, the longest work stoppage in professional sports history.
And baseball lost the right to its exemption with its shoddy treatment of the Minnesota Twins and its fans. The Twins have done everything they could to place a competitive team on the field and live within their means in a small market. Yet less than two days after one of the greatest World Series in history, baseball issued a non-appealable death sentence to the city of Minneapolis and a slap in the face to their loyal fans.
link
Senator Patrick Leahy has also expressed concern about the impact antitrust exemptions are having on access:
"It is prudent for Congress to have a debate over whether the Sports Broadcasting Act is achieving its objective," wrote Leahy, "or, instead, whether it is decreasing the number of games available to viewers and costing consumers more."
<...>
Leahy also suggested that the exclusive deal DirecTV has with the NFL (and the one it is pursuing with MLB) is not protected by the antitrust exemptions, since it involves pay TV.
"The Sports Broadcasting Act only applies to free, over-the-air television, and not to the NFL Network or the NFL's or Major League Baseball's agreements with DirecTV," Leahy wrote. "Those agreements are subject to the antitrust laws, which the Department of Justice has an obligation to enforce."
link
So why is the LA Time editorial singling out Senator Kerry? Maybe it’s because he sits on the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over issue related to the Sports Broadcasting Act:
02/16/2007
Senate to Hold Hearing on MLB-DirectTV Squeeze Play
Kerry says proposed "Extra Innings" deal would cheat millions of baseball fans
WASHINGTON, DC - Sen. John Kerry announced today that the Senate's Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on a proposal deal that will make it hard - if not impossible - for many die-hard baseball fans to follow their favorite teams this season. Kerry said he wanted to review federal guidelines in this area and explore whether it was appropriate for Congress to take action. Kerry is a senior member of the Senate's Commerce Committee, which has oversight over sports carriage issues.
link
The deal should bother everyone for several reasons: it’s anti fan and anti competitiveness, which is in turn anti baseball and down right un-American. Here is what Kerry said:
"Here’s what bothers me," Kerry said yesterday in a telephone interview. "You get M.L.B. and DirecTV marshaling their forces to go out and make money while cutting out fans. In my judgment, more fans watching games strengthens baseball."
He added, "There’s a whole movement toward fans being screwed by consolidation which raises prices and reduces options."
<...>
Kerry isn’t sure the deal can be scotched, but last week he wrote to Kevin Martin, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, asking him to investigate it.
"The F.C.C. doesn’t have the right to say, ‘You can’t do this,’ but they have levers that affect this business," said Kerry, who sits on the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees communications.
link
Screwed is right! Say you’re watching a game and it goes into extra innings, game over for you under the proposed terms of the original deal.
Could the LA Times editorial be an attempt to mask the obvious conflict of interest or could simply be an attack of the RW corporate moguls who own the LA Times and DirecTV:
Tribune owns 22 television stations and, with its cable and satellite coverage, reaches 75 percent of U.S. television households. It has long promoted coordination among its various media properties, including a cable TV station and its newspaper Internet sites. It will also hold many other media properties such as the magazines Field & Stream and The Sporting News, the Chicago Cubs professional baseball team and a publisher of educational materials
link
"Companies like News Corp, headed up by Rupert Murdoch which owns Fox, Direct TV, the New York Post and some 30 odd TV stations, Viacom, owner of CBS, MTV and Viacom Cable, AOL TimeWarner, owner of CNN, aol.com, Time Inc. and Clear Channel Communications, one of the largest owners of radio stations in the U.S.
link
Then there is David Hiller, LA Times publisher:
Hiller was one of the architects of the Tribune Company's purchase of Times Mirror. He was brought in to replace former Los Angeles Times publisher Jeff Johnson after Johnson publicly backed then-Editor Dean Baquet's opposition to staff cuts ordered by the Tribune Company. This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted on Nov. 21, 2006.
link
Hiller has been a rising star at Tribune, most recently occupying the publisher's chair at the Chicago Tribune after serving as senior vice president for development and subsequently as head of Tribune Interactive, where he was responsible for the company's Internet strategy.
His background has been varied, including a stint as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, two years at the Reagan Justice Department (where his colleagues included current Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani) and work as a lawyer at the Chicago firm Sidley & Austin, where his assignments included first fighting, then settling, the landmark federal antitrust case against AT&T that resulted in the telecommunications giant's 1984 breakup.
<...>
Hiller is known for an exceptional sense of humor and a predilection for singing in public. 'He's a bit of a ham,' said one close acquaintance. Hiller allows that his favorite genre is show tunes, although he says that among his proudest performing moments are several occasions on which he sang the national anthem to open Cubs games at Chicago's Wrigley Field. (The Cubs are owned by Tribune Co.) At the Chicago Tribune, where he became publisher in November 2004, Hiller quickly became a familiar figure in the newsroom - not the most natural haunt for a publisher. He arrived on election night that year and spent hours observing the operation at a time when a newsroom is at its most frenzied, and later sponsored a series of well-appreciated brown-bag lunches for staff members at which 'no questions were off-limits,' said Tribune Editor Ann Marie Lipinski.
link
Now go back to the top of this diary and note the beginning of the last paragraph of editorial in question:
Is it bad for the fans? Probably.
That is the biggest clue about how wrong this deal is.
So after the LA Times’ nasty editorial, the deal was announce on Thursday:
March 8, 2007, 4:27PM
MLB confirms deal with DirecTV to carry Extra Innings
Cable, Dish Network have until the end of the month to match the terms in the satellite provider's contract
By DAVID BARRON
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
While announcing today a seven-year agreement with DirecTV to carry its Extra Innings out of market package and to launch the MLB Channel in 2009, Major League Baseball said it will give Dish Network and the In Demand cable consortium until the end of the month to match DirecTV's contract terms and continue carrying Extra Innings.
MLB officials have not confirmed published details of the DirecTV exclusive offer, which reportedly are seven years for $700 million. DirecTV CEO Chase Carey also would not confirm the details or say by how much DirecTV's offer will drop if it no longer has exclusive rights to Extra Innings.
Carey, however, said non-exclusive rights fee for DirecTV would be a "significantly different number."
The final negotiating window for In Demand and Dish Network apparently was prompted in part by protests from U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who has asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the MLB-DirecTV deal.
In Demand, which represents Comcast, Time Warner and Cox cable operators, had no immediate comment on the announcement today. MLB officials would not comment on specific details of its offer to In Demand and Dish other than to say either or both must agree to match DirecTV's rights fee and carriage levels to continue airing Extra Innings this season.
"We would be perfectly satisfied to end up in an exclusive (arrangement) with DirecTV," said MLB executive vice president Tim Brosnan. "The choice as to whether these packages end up on cable will not be ours, but rather the cable operators'."
link
What? Evidently the LA Times was wrong, Kerry took a swing and didn’t miss. In fact, he hit a grounder. Why is the media always trying to distort reality? LOL. It gets better. It seems the revised deal being pitched is a curve ball thrown at the competition:
TV Sports
Baseball Bends on TV Plan, but Suspicions Abound
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: March 9, 2007
Major League Baseball does not like the terminology, but it appears to have buckled to pressure from devoted fans irate that the Extra Innings package of out-of-market games would be the exclusive property of DirecTV.
Snip...
Now InDemand and Dish are entering a 23-day period of negotiations, assuming they get their offers today. Baseball is trying to put them on the defensive, telling them they can choose to be good guys or bad guys depending on their decisions. Baseball wants to shed the image that it was guilty of making Extra Innings less available to its fans, so it is bringing InDemand and Dish back for a final lightning round.
And it wants Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, off its back, and the F.C.C., which is looking into the deal, to go away quickly.
This, quite clearly, is not over.
link
Clearly it isn’t. More analysis of the deal reveals just how intent these entertainment/media moguls are on ramming this deal through while giving the appearance that they tried to consider the fans:
Besides being hell bent on infuriating its best fans and having less people watch its games, Major League Baseball would also prefer if you stop calling to complain. If the FCC and Sen. John Kerry would stop threatening to investigate them, that would be good too.
<...>
The nearly completed exclusivity would cut the availability of Extra Innings from 82 percent of U.S. households to 16 percent. The reason why MLB would do this is far more confusing than the regular baseball fan should have to try to figure out.
That person is someone from, let’s say, Cleveland, who now lives in Atlanta but still wants to watch his Indians so he can enjoy an emotional attachment to his father, his sister and his boys back home. He is gladly willing to shell out $179.95 to do so.
Only now, he won’t be able to, unless he switches to DirecTV.
There is virtually no chance the current consortium of cable and satellite providers (InDemand) can maintain access based on baseball’s smoke-screen offer.
It isn’t just money – the difference between the offers was less than $1 million per year, per team. It mostly hinges on clearing prime space on cable systems for The Baseball Channel, which isn’t scheduled to launch until 2009.
If that means a guaranteed spot on first-tier basic cable, then forget it. The Baseball Channel promises to draw even more anemic ratings than the NFL Network since baseball isn’t even as popular as football. It would be ludicrous to bump a higher-rated channel in favor of one that isn’t yet created and promises to do far worse.
Robert Jacobson, president of InDemand, said in a statement the "conditions for carriage that MLB and DirecTV designed (will) be impossible ... to meet."
The only other hope is intervention by the federal government. But don’t count on Congress telling 30 billionaires they can’t do something. Plus, baseball will probably have better luck confusing politicians with this "it’s the cable operators' fault" smoke screen. "This should help enormously in that area," Selig said. Yeah, no kidding.
Regardless, it seems that MLB has the right to freeze out and anger its customers if it wants. This is the Land of the Free and MLB is free to be arrogant, duplicitous and money-hungry if it so chooses.
link
Until Thursday, opponents of the deal -- including this column but especially the cable companies and Dish -- had been whining that MLB was the bad guy, denying hardworking, puppy-loving baseball fans their precious out-of-town games in the venal pursuit of a few bucks.
So now baseball says, "OK, In Demand and Dish, if you're going to crusade for the inalienable right of baseball fans to be able to see their national game as much as they ever have, match DirecTV's offer and you'll get your wish."
And all of a sudden it's not about the inalienable rights of baseball fans anymore, is it? It's about the cable companies and the Dish Network not liking the terms of the deal. Who's keeping baseball fans who can't or don't want to sign up for DirecTV from getting Extra Innings now?
link
Those questions are still intriguing, and the curvy deal isn’t a done one yet. In fact, the new MLB-DirecTV deal has raised yet another eyebrow in the Senate.
Updated: March 9, 2007, 3:44 PM ET
Kerry, Specter to examine MLB's DirecTV deal
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Two senators plan to examine baseball's $700 million, seven-year deal with DirecTV to determine its impact on fans.
<...>
"I will review this deal to ensure it benefits consumers," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. "I'm encouraged that Major League Baseball may be willing to provide broader access to their games than what was initially proposed. I will be watching closely to ensure the league works in good faith so that America's pastime is available to all fans. My concern all along has been that fans continue to have the ability to enjoy baseball on television."
The agreement also drew the attention of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"I will be analyzing the commitment to see ... if the conditions for other carriers are satisfactory," Specter said. "This arrangement should motivate the NFL to reconsider broader coverage on its Sunday ticket and Thursday/Saturday programming to make such games available to other carriers beyond DirecTV.
link
LA Times not only took a swing and missed, it struck out completely with its biased editorial.
Stay tuned...