Here's the science.
Major league owners unanimously approved television contracts with Fox and Turner Broadcasting System that run through 2013 and are worth more than $3 billion.
Fox will have the ALCS next year, while TBS will have the NLCS. The start of the World Series also will be pushed back three days next year, from Saturday to Tuesday.
As the Bloodhound Gang would say, 'Lift your head up high and blow your brains out!'' - Fox (Who actually prefer to be referred to as FOX, apparently) has almost completely wrapped up Baseball Coverage until the year Roger Clemens and Brett Farve might finally retire.
This means more of the reprehensible 'Scooter', more commentary that borders on the inane and it also means the World Series is moving to a Tuesday start, something Fox has managed to organise in order to improve what it saw as poor ratings from this World Series.
Have a chew on that one for a second. Fox buy the rights to MLB for the foreseeable future, and then tell MLB to move their championship games to a weeknight to help improve their ratings.
Who is wearing the pants in that relationship?
As a baseball fan I am absolutely repulsed by this move. Another few years of Joe Buck having a seizure every time Manny dogs it out of the box. Another post season of Fox driving stories home with a Nazi rally party like borderline dementia. We can look forward for a long time now to cutting edge incisive commentary from Joe Buck and the boys, as in the World Series where they reminded viewers before every first pitch that, being in an AL park, they will be using the DH! Thank God for Fox.
At least I know for a fact it's not just me. Take wikipedia's description of Fox's coverage of MLB
Among baseball enthusiasts, Fox's coverage of Major League Baseball is not thought of highly. Most cite "whooshing" sound effects to accompany on-screen graphics, the use of Scooter, a talking baseball created with the intent of teaching the younger audience the difference between pitches, and even analyst Tim McCarver as reasons for their disdain
Fox are hated throughout the World, hated, ridiculed and threatened with legal action too!
Incensed by one of Joe Buck's more famous eulogistic rants, his nuclear assault on Randy Moss the Vikings actually demanded that Fox remove Buck's persona from the air altogether. Buck went insane when Moss mocked the 'moon' after scoring a huge TD against Green Bay. Buck went completely ballistic, totally over the top in taking his time to slate Moss, for what was basically a silly little joke, nothing more nothing less.
Hey Joe Buck, this one's for you''This from someone (Joe Buck of FOX) who fronts for a networking featuring shows like "Who's Your Daddy?" - a reality program where a young woman in skimpy attire has to guess which of twenty men is her natural father.''
Indeed! This also from a station who's Newsteam has led with headlines such as 'Fan uses stilts to watch game!' . Fox is the real life incarnation of Ron Bergundy's team in 'Anchorman', and almost as funny too!
Here's the thing.
Fox's coverage has reached David Caruso like performance standards. It is so absolutely awful it is totally hilarious. Like an entertainingly awful episode of CSI: Miami (How on earth did they get it so right with CSI:NY and so, so wrong with CSI: Miami?!) Fox finds new ways every night to get progressively worse and worse, to the point where you know there is a hilarious moment around the corner.
There is a sinister, worrying aspect, for example the fact that Fox can force MLB to move the World Series up a few days to suit them. I choose to not worry though, and to be happy, and to look forward to more from Fox, Joe Buck, Rick Sutcliffe because you just can't laugh enough in life.
I know next season McCarver is going to go one better than the time he mentioned that David Eckstein of the Cardinals, like us, has 20 digits, and then he proceeded to state what he meant was 10 fingers and 10 toes.
Thank God for Fox!
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