Center Field Shot 

         Baseball in the Advanced Media Age

      Our history of televised baseball finds that often a positive benefit of television for baseball can have a corresponding negative side. Increasing television revenues were distributed in an unbalanced way, leading to greater disparity between "haves" and "have not" teams. Disagreements over television money also contributed to the destructive labor management disputes that affected baseball from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s.

     Television extended baseball to a much greater audience than previous media did. However, television coverage revealed that baseball is not an aesthetically pleasing television sport. The long season and large number of games have also been a problem for baseball. Baseball has an excess inventory so few individual regular season games are significant enough to attract a large national audience.

     Television exposure, while expanding and nationalizing baseball, also has increased the scrutiny of professional baseball operations. Baseball’s special status as the national pastime has been eroded by this scrutiny and by the exposure of other major sports on television. Whether fear of franchise relocation or taking the game away from fans without access to pay television or simply political posturing, Congress has been much more likely to call hearings on baseball issues than it once did.