Blacked-out

On behalf of baseball fans everywhere, I sent the following letter to Rupert Murdoch, the head of Fox television.

Dear Mr. Murdoch,

I think we can both agree that the beauty of America lies in the fact that people can get anything they want for a given price. While this convenience forces us to deal with heartless capitalism and greed as a result, it is well worth the tradeoff. Since we as a society cope with these consequences, we are thus entitled to a system that does not fail. This past Saturday, however, the system failed.

Having to leave New York to go to school in Philadelphia is bad enough on its own, but it is even worse without YES, the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network. Anytime the Yankees are on national television, I try to watch the game at my apartment. Of course, this past weekend's Yankees-Sox series was not just an ordinary set of games. I looked forward to the series throughout the week, as I labored through schoolwork and job interviews. Thankfully, the Friday game was to be broadcast on ESPN and Saturday's game on Fox (this is where you come in). ESPN2, realizing the gravity of this series, had promised to show the Sunday game if it were to be decisive in the playoff race to accommodate true baseball fans.

After the Yankees suffered a tough defeat Friday night, I was anxious to wake up Saturday morning and see the game. I was caught by surprise when I turned on the tube and saw Stargate SG-1 instead of the best rivalry in baseball. Great. Frantic, I started calling my fellow Yankee fans at Penn, but found the same results. Worse, since the game was a "National Live Blackout" for mlb.com, the official Web site of baseball could not offer coverage for anyone in the entire United States ... or Guam, Japan and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

That makes sense. If you could watch the game on any television, there would be no need to simulcast it. Too bad Philadelphia, Washington, Houston and various other local Fox stations missed the memo on the national broadcast.

I figured that I would give my trusty cable company a call. The kind women whom I spoke with explained to me that the networks select the programming, not the cable distributors. It was Fox's fault. While the cable company was conveniently staffed on the weekends, one of the largest national networks was unreachable. All I heard was a prerecorded message bragging about how Fox Sports was the "Home of Saturday Baseball." Right.

I had to settle for tying my AM antenna, strategically angled northeast and covered in aluminum foil, to my standing lamp with the plastic covering of a Wall Street Journal leftover from a long week of on-campus recruiting to listen to the Yankees clinch the American League East title. While it was nice not to have to hear Joe Buck's Yankee-hating opinions, pictures speak louder than words.

Hours later, as I had started to cool down, my housemates and I were engaged in an interstate overtime thriller as Michigan looked to knock off Michigan State on ABC. After the Spartans missed a field goal and Michigan looked to drive for the win, we were then entertained by ... the pre-game festivities of the Penn State game. This is not just a Fox problem, but an overall network issue, and we need someone who is in a position to fix it.

While I am glad that we are not leaving these games to broadcast Heidi, some priority should be given to the end of a thrilling game. If you are going to really commoditize the sport, then you cannot let down the customers. I am sure that even many Phillies fans would rather watch the ninth inning of the Yankees-Sox than the first inning of the local game, which would have been the tradeoff in the end. It is an issue of optimality that is ignored in television contracts.

If the aim was to make the local fans happy, Fox could have even shown most of the Yankees game, which ended at 4:18 p.m., and then cut to the start of the Phillies at 4. Instead, we got nothing.

Too often, there are glaring reminders that these contracts are not at all in the best interest of fans. Major League Baseball has been hyping up the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry all season as the best in sports. If you advertise for an amazing product, you also have to put it in stores. Both teams' seasons came down to one weekend. This is the product, Mr. Murdoch. Why can you not deliver it to the people?

Mark Littmann is a senior, finance concentrator from New York. Case of the Mondays appears on Mondays.

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