I live in Hawaii. Obviously this makes it a tad difficult to either attend games or watch local broadcasts that are over 3000 miles away. Apparently though, MLB.TV cares little about that teeny tiny issue since they prevent me from watching every single Los Angeles Dodgers game live.
Yes, that’s right, apparently the entire West Coast collection of MLB teams are blacked out in Hawaii.
—–
MLB.TV originally informed me on Friday that I was blacked out from watching the games of five West Coast teams. On Saturday though, after being instructed to call back and talk to a supervisor, I was informed that I was actually currently blacked out from the entire West Coast and then some, a total of nine teams.
The shift in the number or location of the teams doesn’t make it any more or less stupid, since it’s just as realistic for me to watch or attend a game in New York on a daily basis as it is in Los Angeles. However, the fact that it only got worse with clarification from a supervisor was so pathetically stupid to me that I couldn’t help but sigh and feel sorry for the support guys who had no logical answer for my common sense questions.
All he could do for me is apologize about the idiotic policy, so doesn’t that indicate a problem with the policy itself if your own employees have no idea why the hell it exists?
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1. cmd600 Posted: April 10, 2012 at 08:27 AM (#4102450)Especially when you can go to the marketplace and freely choose to follow the Tigers or the Nationals instead. Nobody's pointing a gun at your head to watch baseball, and after all, it's their business, they can do what they want with it, and the steadily rising viewership numbers prove that all complaints like this are groundless.
The problem is not that you can't get to the games, but that no television stations in Hawaii want to pay enough for you to watch any of the teams that play on the West Coast.
If they're all blacked out, does that mean that ANY of them could broadcast to Hawaii or if one of them did, would the other one NOT be blacked out?
This isn't like choosing a different place to get a haircut. We follow teams based on irrational passion, and getting Canadians to just follow the Indians after growing-up wearing Blue Jay caps and flipping George Bell baseball cards isn't that simple.
You're right. It's an irrational passion.
Right again, but it's not pointless to debate the logic. For example, if it's just about rising viewership then I can logically debate that it's in their best interest to NOT black out all of Canada. Even if you blacked out all of Ontario, that still leaves 9 provinces and 3 territories full of people with $100+ in their pocket for MLB.TV
Full?
While Andy is right that it's their business, it seems like a bad business decision to me. Yes they're making boatloads of money, but they could still make more I think.
On the other hand, it's pretty amazing that we have this capability at all. When I was a kid and everything was perfect I had to fiddle with the rabbit ears on my TV to be lucky enough to watch the Red Sox on a UHF station and not every game was televised. If I wanted to know how teams west of New York did I had to wait for the afternoon Lowell Sun to arrive with the late box scores (for this reason I couldn't understand why everyone thought the Boston Globe sports section was so good).
Monday Night Baseball and the Saturday Game of the Week was a big deal because it was a chance to see teams and players you otherwise wouldn't.
I'm not saying this isn't a valid complaint, just noting how remarkable I find the current state of following sports.
Okay. You got me there :)
Pittsburgh Pirate Bay!
Sorry, I guess I should have put a sarcasm flag on my earlier post. There's no real defense for this silly policy beyond the bureaucratic imperative.
While doing a chat with Jim Bowden on Friday, we got lots of angry questions about blackouts. I kept sending people to Mug's map of blackouts - I'm still not quite sure what they really expected us to do about it.
The RSNs are a factor, but I still think it could be done better. I'm 2.5 hours from Toronto, and Sportsnet carries the Blue Jays in my town... so yes, I can watch Blue Jay games without MLBTV. However, MLBTV offers a whole lot more than Sportsnet (eg. watching Blue Jays games on my iPad). Seems like there should be some middle ground.
You were on MLB's radio network. They expected you to tell Bud Selig personally that the policy was dumb :-)
But watching an unauthorized stream is like stealing money from Bud's pocket! Which is about the best reason to watch an unauthorized stream since UFC head stooge Dana White claimed he would shut down the internet if people kept streaming his subpar pay-per-views.
Both as a consumer and as a businessman I think it's useful to share complaints (and praises) for a business' practices. I don't know if your chat was the right forum for that but I think there is a benefit to MLB fans letting MLB know they are unhappy. As a fan it will hopefully result in a change and if I were running this aspect of MLB I would want to know if there was an area where our fans (read: consumers) felt we could improve our product delivery system.
This is where I'm at as well. MLB.TV is the only service that shows games how I want to watch them (which is why I paid for it). I'm a bit bummed out that they don't have a workaround for the rights issue.
Sure. Even if the price for MLBTV went up a bit, the fact that I could watch the way I want to watch and probably save money by canceling Sportsnet it would still be worth it.
I've noticed while watching the MLBTV free games (except the Blue Jay free game of course!) that it's commercial free. Wouldn't a good compromise be that Sportsnet gets to air it's sold advertising on the MLBTV stream?
I'd be fine with that. The local cable companies would probably ##### because the local ads they sell wouldn't be included.
Surcharges that go to the rights holder is what MLB.TV is. It's a $100 or $125 surcharge that goes to the rights holders (the teams).
If they thought they could price it higher, I'm sure they would.
I think any situation where people can cancel their cable subscription and watch their local team's games is very unlikely to happen in the near future. MLB is simply not going to #### on their cash cow of local TV contracts for that, and even if they did, you would probably have to pay double or triple your current subscription price to make it revenue-neutral.
You can do that right now with a proxy server.
Really? Didn't know that. Can any fellow Canadians tell me if that's true with Shaw Direct?
I'm going to assume the answer is "no". The Blue Jays are owned by Rogers Communications, who are the owners of Sportsnet and the competitor to Shaw Direct. I'll be blown away if Rogers allows their competitor to stream games to MLBTV, even though Shaw Direct already pays Rogers for the broadcast rights over regular TV.
Did Billy call in?
Sure, if you're some sort of techno wizard.
I know. It's just a really stupid situation. I want to watch Giants games online. I live in the Bay Area. CSN BA does not offer me that service. MLB.TV sort of does if you squint and use a proxy. All I want is to pay money to watch the Giants.
Interestingly, this problem goes away in the playoffs.
The NHL gives me video highlights for only $5 more!
1) Even the very best ones are often too slow to stream content in decent quality, and
2) You are breaking your terms of service which could lead to your service cancellation if they find out (and it would be pretty easy for them to figure it out, if they wanted to. Detecting users that connect from 7 different cities in the same day? Yeah...)
Didn't the Rangers just sign a super long deal?
Just like revenue sharing is just like stealing from the Yankee's pocket, eh?
(Can't believe you missed this one)
I'm in trouble if ESPN ever hires Dayton Moore!
I live 3 hours from my beloved Rangers. I would love to watch the Rangers on MLB.tv and am willing to plunk down the $125.00 a year to do it.
But they have me blacked out from watching the Rangers AND Astros on MLB.tv
This really torques me off. I wonder if there are enough people like me who could sue MLB in a class action suit to force them to make my favorite team accessible to me?
Bring it on, fascist!
1) Even the very best ones are often too slow to stream content in decent quality, and
2) You are breaking your terms of service which could lead to your service cancellation if they find out (and it would be pretty easy for them to figure it out, if they wanted to. Detecting users that connect from 7 different cities in the same day? Yeah...)
Your first point is off-base. I regularly use MLB.tv with Tor and am able to watch games in the best available quality.
If I could dump my satellite dish and pay $125 for MLB TV I would do it in an instant. MLB is the reason I have a dish.
If Canada breaks apart, blame MLB.
Just tossing out zany ideas...
Less hassle just get a Swedish VPN or similar. I once got a US VPN (didn't cost much) so I could take advantage of Hulu and a few other services.
Last time someone tried this for baseball it didn't work out so well.
A better work around would be a requirement that if you are claiming an area that you must invest certain amount of dollars advertising there(or something else---such as having a minor league affiliate in that area)
Of course the real best work around is to revise the archaic rules in the first place, from the ground up based upon the technology we currently have and where it's heading in the future.
Or, perhaps better still, if you're going to claim broadcast rights in a certain area, you should have to actually broadcast a specific number of games in that area. I believe that's what causes the real frustration: not that you can't get a certain team's games on MLB TV, but that you can't get that team's games at all.
So, going back to the original article, if nine teams are going to claim broadcast rights in Hawaii, then those nine teams have to find a way to broadcast a certain minimum number of their games live in the islands. If, for example, the Dodgers fail to broadcast at least a set number of games live in Hawaii, then the Dodgers can no longer claim broadcast rights in that area.
Agreed; but, sadly, I don't see that happening any time soon.
DB
I actually have said this: I should move back to Naples, Florida (lived there in the 80s). AFAIK, SW Florida is the largest area in the country with no MLB blackouts, not even the Marlins...
Agreed, but I think that MLB's argument would be they can't force TV providers to carry their games. I think that if the teams can't negotiate the ability to carry the games, then MLB.Com should be allowed to offer a package for that team only that allows you to receive a number games for the blacked out team.
Of course I think that MLB should allow anyone to purchase additional plan that allows them to receive blacked out games. Make it an non-prorating annual cost, and require that they have to subscribe to the standard package first, and even include the commercials from the broadcasting provider, and I bet they still sell a ton of packages.
FoxyProxy makes circumventing MLBtv's blackout restrictions immensely easy. The only real downside to MLB's policy is if you want to use your smart phone to watch games in your area, which is not a problem that is particularly easy to solve.
I am having this problem with streaming the games through my XBox. I am an idiot, though, because I knew this would be difficult to fix and I still bought the damn thing.
(difficult because my gf's work pays for static IP at home, so I can't futz with it on the router)
You have just struck upon another infuriating aspect of these blackouts: the areas covered by them are often over-reaching and unreasonable. The last time this topic came up somebody posted that he was in Montana or some other abandoned territory and there were something like 6 or 7 teams that were blacked out for him. It was about a 1000 mile radius.
I agree. I just find it bizarre that the games are blacked out where the games are not even available. I guess MLB would make the argument that it would reduce the incentive for the local providers to carry RSN's from other regions, but I think that's a completely wrong argument. In fact, if they showed games from other teams in the blackout areas with no access, they could probably MAKE THE CASE for demand in those areas, which would incentivize the local providers to start showing games (where currently the real money lies).
It's just seems like really bad policy, the kind of thing that happens when no one is thinking clearly about the original purposes of the blackout policy and it's all about some perverse version of mutually assured destruction (i.e. I won't go into this territory because if I do, you have to and then neither of us will recoup our investment for doing so).
Sounds like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Territory there is extremely contested among different Christian factions, so much so that the keys to the church are traditionally held by two Muslim families.
In fact, there is an abandoned ladder on a ledge outside the church that has been there for at least 150 years, but nobody dares remove it because nobody remembers which sect put it there, so taking it down would be in effect a declaration of holy war.
Hawaii is that ladder.
It's also pointless for a customer to debate the policy with some customer service rep on the phone who is powerless to do anything about it. Simply asking for the reason behind the policy, and registering your complaint is fine; but getting into an argument is futile.
A few years ago my brother and I were renting tuxes for a wedding. The clerk handed me the contract and I signed it without reading it, and gave it back to him. I thought we were about done and went outside, but since my brother didn't come out after a few minutes I went back in. I found him arguing with the clerk over the contract, trying to get the clerk to strike out various clauses, which the clerk of course was refusing to do.
My brother then turned to me and said, "How could you, as a lawyer, just sign a contract without even reading it?" I just shrugged and replied that I had a good idea what it said and that we weren't dealing with a whole lot of money in any event. I then added: "Do you really expect the clerk to strike out clauses on his own? He has no power to do that. You can either rent by the terms of this contract or go elsewhere. Now make a decision and let's get out of here, already." He begrudgingly signed the contract.
Looking at some areas not claimed by any team. Southwest Florida has already been mentioned above. Funny that the Reds and Indians haven't both claimed Columbus and Central Ohio. And what's with Northern Virginia? Hasn't Angelos claimed that area?
I don't understand why Bud Selig doesn't sit down and talk about the policy decisions with people who answer the phones.
I do feel the Hawaiians pain. In Iowa, basically every Midwestern team is blacked out.
I think that's actually the same very light gray as the Reds/Indians/Pirates part of western West Virginia. No way do the Reds and Indians let a couple million people in their own state go.
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