On Mon, Dec 28, 2020 at 11:45 AM PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > > Many years ago now there was a list member, I think a woman (the memory > fades) who I had a longish argument with about sports on broadcast TV. She > was angry that her shows were preempted by sports, especially during > postseasons, and wanted all sports to be moved to cable. I was very much > opposed, arguing that many households did not have access to cable (at the > time true, not sure how much so today) and that various government > subsidies and supports for big time sports justified making it available on > the public airways. Over the years though, the NBA moved almost all its > national and postseason games to cable, and MLB moved a big portion of > theirs, and MNF went to ESPN, and in my mind I conceded the point to my > interlocutor. If MNF moves back to ABC it may signal that my concession was > premature. MLB and NBA ratings are not nearly as high as the NFL of course, > but the continued erosion of broadcast market share may mean that the > networks would prefer a reliable if relatively small sports rating to the > gamble of developing new programming that could easily have cratered > ratings. >
My recollection is that Tom Heald was the advocate for shifting all sports to cable. He argued for this policy for his convenience rather than any principle. In the current DVR/streaming era, live sports and awards shows are the only shows that reliably draw live viewers. I'm a late adopter to TV technologies due to a mix of financial pressures and being content with what I've got and it's only relatively recently that I got a DVR. Yet I have stopped watching non-sports programming in real time. Since young adults don't have my inertia (they don't know what non-DVR TV is) watching live TV may be alien to them and shifting sports to cable might not mean increased ratings for regular programs. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAJE-FiG76XZi%3D1uJ%3DOb9Ze1bPCXDb0qGgT4ox%2Bdn9qqn4ZS7PA%40mail.gmail.com.
