[Yachtzee]

Originally Posted by MikeThierry

I can understand the frustration here but ESPN is basing it's programming off of potential viewership and ratings. One could question the first game of the year but aside from that, all of those games are in markets where national viewership has traditionally been rated high or those markets are huge markets. I know that the Reds draw great local support from their TV ratings but something like the Cubs vs. Cardinals has in the past drawn well on a national level. Yankees vs. Red Sox might seem overplayed but it gets the ratings. I wish that they would do something like the NFL does where every team is presented in a Thursday night prime time game each season. In that scenario, it would be more fair. This is going to sound extremely pompous so forgive me before hand but realistically, the Reds will not get the kind of national viewership that you or I believe they should get unless they make it to the World Series. That always tends to move the national needle and eye on a team.

This is one of the reasons why baseball has taken a back seat to football in many parts of the country. The NFL has done a great job of creating a structure where star talent is spread throughout the league and ensuring that the best teams get primetime exposure regardless of market size. By allowing their national broadcast partners to punt the smaller markets in favor of short-term ratings wins by featuring the big market teams, MLB is pretty much telling large sections of the country that they're not important. If they had a better long-term strategy to build up the quality of teams across the league and ensure that more teams got national exposure, maybe baseball would still be the National Pastime.