I keep reading how the suits running MLB want the post season to be seen by the largest amount of fans possible. Also about how they want the kids to be able to enjoy the post season. I guess that’s why they decided to air the Phillies-Rockies game at 10:00pm last Sunday night. I’m sure there were very few school age kids watching that game last week, even if Monday was a holiday.
Then there’s the curious decision to start the playoffs so close to the weekend, with the Dodgers-Phillies not playing on Saturday, but starting at 8:00pm Sunday night. Once again the Philadelphia school kids are being deprived of watching their team play on a Sunday night.
For the ALCS, the Yankees and Angels are off on Sunday. But strangely their game on Monday is scheduled to start at 4pm local time. What about the L.A. school kids who may want to watch the Angels? First pitch is scheduled to be thrown at about 1pm Hollywood time. Maybe FOX doesn’t want the Yankees-Angels to interfere with “House” and “Lie to Me”. The move just doesn’t make sense to me at all.
If MLB is serious about getting larger ratings for the post season, they need to be more flexible when scheduling games, and they need to have the NLCS and ALCS played on both Saturday and Sunday.
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It used to be that way, with more weekend games than weekday games. Up until recently, the World Series always started on a Saturday. The schedule for the seven games would be Sat-Sun-Tues-Wed-Thurs-Sat-Sun. That meant four of the potential seven games would be played on weekends. However, more people watch TV on weeknights than weekends so MLB and the TV networks changed their scheduling so that fewer games would be on weekends. That’s why there are long breaks between the end of one series and the beginning of the next and why this year’s World Series begins on a Wednesday with only Games 3 and 4 on the weekend. Plus, FOX has to have Sunday night games. They can’t interfere with their football doubleheaders.
I hate it, but what are we going to do? Money talks, the suits see weeknight games as the profitable, so screw the fans. Such is the business of baseball.