The money to build and location is already there and ready to go the problem is finding a reason to go ahead and build.

But adding just two teams does leave them with one division having more than 5 teams again.

At some point in the future I see them adding 3 more teams to each league (from current) and then adding two more Wildcards to the playoffs…
But probably do that in stages…

There are designated times for local commercials in most shows. But Sports is the most difficult because of the haphazard schedule the breaks happen.

Sometimes a break is missed due to an extra long inning and what the computer thinks is a 2:30 break turns out to be a shorter one because they ran a shorter opportunity break instead.

Since the guy who runs the computer can’t possibly watch every channel he is running breaks for those things are going to keep happening to you.

And the only one who can really make them change thier system is the network itself!

Just have to find 2 more cities where it would be viable. Vegas and where else?

and of course, that eliminates “outs” for dead attendance teams (how many of them left? TB, anyone else that might ever need to move?)

I was fuming. Emailed Comcast, told them I understand they probably have contractual obligations to air so many local commercials but there’s plenty of tapped shows on SNY they could use to fulfill that. Not live play.

They apologized, said they’d look into it. About a month goes by, everything’s fine. Then they start doing it again. I wrote them back and told them I’m paying for that channel, I should be able to watch all live play. If I’m going to miss some of it, I want my bill prorated.
Again they apologized. And it hasn’t happened again since.

So glad that selling point of cable way back when was no commercials……

Product placements drive me nuts. One of my favorite shows ‘The Fringe” are sporting these fancy Nissan’s lately and in one episode the character ask about the navigation system in the dialog.

Want to have the characters practically licking a coke can, fine, but leave the dialog alone.

And don’t think that wasn’t thought about before they made the decision to balance the leagues out!

I mean even the damn lineup has a sponsor these days!

Have you noticed even in your normal prime time show how many product placements there are these days?
This is due to the fact that they realize they can’t really add anymore Commercial time to the schedule because everyone has a remote control now and will potentially click away!

Each show producer used to get 4 Minutes an Hour to sell their own advertisements.
few get them anymore and use product placement instead.

Don’t see how anything you said was about what I said that even with the extra seats they didn’t always sell them and despite saying they sold out tickets never enough people showed up to use them!
Sold out tickets but EMPTY stands!

I know you were just making another attempt to try and prove me wrong which seems to be your new mission in life when your not trying to make Sandy Sliced bread…

But what you said made MY case even more than you think because the fact that less seats means less staff to have to spread around to service them!

You missed my main point (as usual) to focus on something minor again where the main point is LESS SUPPLY usually means GREATER DEMAND and they aren’t concerned with day of game sales they are all about Season tickets which sets their budget early (even before the season starts!) and if they show up or not they don’t care because they can always sell GENERAL ADMISSION tickets that will fill those seats of those who paid by didn’t bother to show up!

The issue is they may lose some east coast viewers late in games that seem to be blowouts but the excitement of a close game will keep them up past their bedtime.
But they expect to lose viewers in those types of games anyway no matter what coast they are on!

But it is better to start a game where the entire country can see the start and stay than it is to start at a normal time and possibly lose all the west coast viewers because the game is out of hand before they even switched on the TV!

It really only affects National games which is where the bulk of the money is made.

East coast games move back an hour and West coast games usually move up two! But only in cases where an east team plays a west team on the west coast.
When West plays West they play normal time if I’m not mistaken. Game starts at 7 PST!

There are lots of reasons aside from just ratings…Local Affiliate deals also play a big role. In the Midwest most of the affiliates are not owned by the network and under contract their broadcast needs to start and end within thier national window 7pm-8pm is usually Local Affiliates airtime on the east coast (but the nets own most of the east coast networks), 6-7pm in Central, 5-6 in Mountain and Pacific they have more leeway as the networks usually own the Pacific affiliates and can do what they want. they aren’t really affiliates!

So there is a lot at play but the main line of thinking is if you start the game you will finish so the idea to start when more people can see it will eventually result in more audience for the entire game.

Ya, they did a crap job of promoting it. In fact, I’d be going full court press on advertising Opening Day for all the teams if I were them.

I have been championing the idea of going to 2 divisions per league for a few years now. I went as far as having 2 division winners, 2 second place teams, 2 wild cards(from either division). 2 second place teams play the 2 wild card teams in 3 game series at the 2nd place team’s stadium no travel no off days. Then the top wins division winner plays the worst of the two teams to advance and the other to match up both in 3 game series at the 1st place team. Finally you have the League championships in a 7 game series in traditional format. By doing it this way by my count you have the same amount of potential games as you do now.