Thumbs up for the MLB Network

by
March 24, 2009

At least according to advertisers and the people who care about them:

IT is rare that media buyers form a consensus on anything, but in the case of the neophyte Major League Baseball Network, which had its premiere in January, they seem to agree that they like its chances of becoming a successful player in the television sports marketplace.

Executives at the network, two-thirds owned by Major League Baseball and one-third owned by a group of cable and satellite operators, said that it was on target to meet its first-quarter ad revenue projections, with major advertisers like Sprint, I.B.M., Kraft, Domino’s Pizza, Geico, Progressive, Sony PlayStation, 2K Sports and Viagra, among others, already on the air. And none of them are among the 18 official M.L.B. sponsors, who, at some point this year, also are expected to jump in with varying amounts of advertising-dollar support.

Great. Now how about Insight Communications getting over its snit about competing cable companies partially owning the thing and finding a spot for it on my dial, because I’m getting really sick of getting seven Animal Planets and not one MLB Network.


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Larry Seltzer
15 years ago

I do love the MLB Network (channel 86 here on FiOS). I have one technical complaint: the schedule data they put out for the guide and even their own schedule online is weak or even inaccurate. Sometimes it’s just wrong about what will be on in a slot, and sometimes the information is vague, bascially saysing “some old game” will be on. And since you can’t know what’s going on you can’t effectively use the DVR.

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Dante B
15 years ago

Remember that nice little tingling sensation in your brain when you heard the theme song to Baseball Tonight? That was your neurotransmitters telling you that Harold Reynolds and Co. were about to go on air and talk about whatever just happened in your favorite sport that day. Sure, you already knew about everything they were saying, but why would you NOT want to hear them talk about how that reliever who was facing your favorite team was only supposed to face righties, and your manager got his leftie bopper off the bench because he knew said opposing reliever would not be pulled by his dim-witted manager?

Anyway, in my mind, that beautiful feeling has been extended into the off-season with the inception of MLB Network.

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Jeff V.
15 years ago

Good news, hopefully the influx of legitimate advetisers will put a halt on MLB channel going back on its word by airing infomercials rather then 24/7 baseball.  I have only seen them do it once so far but I was hoping that they would be a refuge from that type of advertising, even at 4am.

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