At NBC's annual NFL preseason "seminar," NBC Sports
President Dick Ebersol said The Baseball Network concept could
have worked. Ebersol: "I will always believe if the strike had
not come, this thing would have been a big home run and the
public would have loved it. We were given absolute, solid
personal guarantees that a strike would never be used to blow
this up, by the highest levels." Ebersol meets with NBC
President Robert Wright today to decide if the network will waive
the 45-day exclusive negotiating period it shares with ABC.
Ebersol's angry words in May and NBC's recent Olympic
acquisitions should mean they are out (Milton Kent, Baltimore
SUN, 8/24).
NETWORKS? WHO NEEDS 'EM? DirecTV has reached a
distribution agreement with MLB and ESPN to transmit over 200 MLB
games at no charge for the remainder of the '95 season. The free
preview is available to all DirecTV subscribers. In addition,
DirecTV will provide out-of-market baseball games for the entire
'96 and '97 seasons (N.Y. TIMES, 8/24). Patrick Mellon, Senior
VP/Affiliate Sales & Marketing at ESPN, which is the exclusive
rightsholder for domestic distribution of out-of-market MLB
telecasts: "While we are disappointed that cable was not
incorporated into these agreements, we are working to achieve
that goal in the future" (ESPN). CNBC's Sue Herera called
DirecTV's MLB deal "the latest salvo in the battle for
subscribers between DBS and the cable operators." DirecTV's Tom
Bracken: "Now we have out-of-market sports packages for the NFL,
NBA, hockey, and now baseball. ... [Baseball] really fits into
our core strategy, in that the majority of our subscribers
purchase the small dish for sports programming" ("Sports View,"
CNBC, 8/23).
DRIVE FOR SHOW, PUTT FOR DOUGH: Rudy Martzke reports the
following threesome recently got together at an unnamed NJ golf
club: CBS President Peter Lund, CBS Sports President David Kenin
and baseball TV negotiator Barry Frank. CBS is eligible to bid
on baseball when exclusive ABC/NBC negotiating time ends October
9 (USA TODAY, 8/24).
