That shouldn't be hard. I pay Comcast a lot of money for
cable and I have ESPN. So, I can settle down in my chair and watch my team,
right?
When the rain delay ended in Detroit, my feed of ESPN
morphed into ESPNEWS.
What?
First, I tweeted at Comcast. I've gotten answers before.
This time, no response. After two calls to my favorite cable provider, I got an
answer. ESPN had blacked out the game.
So, I called ESPN. After a lengthy wait (designed to make
you hang up), I talked to a nice gentleman who told me in my area because the
game was also on Fox Sports Detroit.
Living in a north Indianapolis suburb, I know that I’m in a
blackout area of the Chicago Cubs (178 miles away), Chicago White Sox (178
miles away) and Cincinnati Reds (125 miles away), but the Tigers (266 miles away)
revelation is new. If I lived in Fort Wayne (104 miles to the northeast), I
would understand, but I don’t.
If you look at mlb.com’s site, it doesn’t show the Tigers as
blacking out my area. I called MLB and they told me that they couldn’t tell me
what my blackout area was for cable TV and could only help me with mlb.tv.
I even called the Detroit Tigers, and I left a message with
the director of broadcasting.
My TV said the game should be on.
The Indianapolis Star said the game should be on.
But, no game and no answers.
My quick thoughts
- Major League Baseball’s blackout rules are ridiculous. Twenty years from now, a fan my age will stop trying to watch baseball and do something else.
- Today’s broadcast companies don’t really want you to call. They want you to give up in situations like this. When it comes to Comcast, the Federal Communications Commission has enabled a monopoly when it comes to cable service. I have one choice where I live – Comcast.
- If the Tigers decided to black out my area, that’s another reason I don’t like the Tigers. Go Royals!
