Here, see this picture of the sun?
Well, ol' shiny hasn't seen the World Series with its own eyes since 1984! Can you believe it!
At least this season, Fox scooched up the start times.
The New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies will open the Series tonight at 7:57 p.m. EDT — about 30 minutes earlier than usual — and will end each game when most children, at least those living on the East Coast, are sleeping.
Rather than catering to kids, Major League Baseball and Fox are shooting for the highest ratings they can get to help sell the commercials that pay the bills.
“World Series games, for more than 20 years, have been played at a time when the greatest number of fans can watch, from coast to coast,” Fox Sports president Ed Goren said in a released statement. “This year, we worked with MLB to move postseason start times 30 to 40 minutes earlier, and we would be very willing to consider televising World Series games played during the day if the fee to acquire those rights reflected the smaller audiences that day games would naturally produce.”
When Goren’s comments were relayed, Selig wouldn’t close the door on lowering rights.
REACT: A major sports commissioner, willingly taking LESS money for almighty television, would be something to behold. Of course, I don't see it actually happening. But the thought is intriquing.
Forget "the kids" as an argument for making World Series games start at a better hour. It really should be about us. The adults! You know, people who work for a living!
Truth be told, kids aren't going to be jostling in front of the ol' wooden fence knothole on their walk home from school. That Norman Rockwell painting isn't real. Kids are buried in their iPhones, XBox's, and the like.
So forget the kids. Just move the start of World Series games up to 7:25 latest in the east. That would be perfect! If you can trim the length of post-season games down about 10 minutes, then the (hopefully) thrilling conclusions would happen at 10:45 or so in the east.
Day games? Eh. I'm not as romantic about that as Selig. Especially if that game has to fight tooth and nail with football.
But imagine a restaurant that only opened at 8:30, not 7 p.m. While maybe you can attract diners with more money at that late hour, how are you going to grow the overall number of people who might eat there on a regular basis?
That, and maybe we need to give each manager a booklet with only 3 "vouchers" for "mount visits" each game. When you are out, you are out. Period.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Totally random side note. While google-image-searching for this lovely sun picture, I came across this blog thread. It is a flight sim nerd's screen-capped account of a computer flight from Beijing to Seoul.
Whooo. Hah. Exciting stuff. Just look at all that intense computer game action!
It rained on the landing in Seoul! Incredible!
But hey, I'm a nerd in my own right (see Ryder Cup, President's Cup, and Solheim Cup obsessions in golf) so I sorta dig the fact that there's a group of wanna be commercial aviation jocks out there pouring hours into their Pentium III's flying Chinese 737s.
Whatever stiffens your joystick.
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