WGN No More?

[Runnys]

The only games I couldn't watch were brewer games due to blackout restrictions.

[MrSheps]

The WGN numbers are bullshit.  They were not losing money.  They are straight up lying.

 

If they were paying $250K per game for 81 games or whatever, and there were 25 "prime" games that are market valued at $750K, those 25 games alone would have earned them more money than the remaining 56.  

 

According to WGN they only got back 50K per game.  Using 81 games (i don't know how many they actually had), 81 * 50,000 = 4.05 Million.

 

If at a minimum, 25 of those games were "prime" then at least for those games they received the full $250 in ad revs.  25 * 250,000 = 6.25 million.  (I can make this reasonable assumption since another station from the same market just paid 3X more for these same games)

 

Again, on the open market, 25 games alone = $18.75 Million.  That is a verifiable FACT.  If the WGN numbers were truthful, how in the fuck would WLS be willing to pay 3X more for something that couldn't even pull in $250K per game on the most "desirable" nights/days/weekends/what-the-fuck-ever?  

 

WGN has been fucking over the Cubs ever since Trib Co. bought them.  They have been using their great big corp structure to play a shell game to hide money EARNED BY and OWED TO the Cubs.  Now that they no longer have the protection of the mother ship, the Cubs can now demand them to pay market value or get the fuck out.  

Waiting for the financial terms to come out might inform the deal better.  Does the tweet say the deal IS worth 750 per or is it quoting "market value" to make a guess?  To your point, WGN may not have been losing 200K per game, but it's hard to imagine they were profiting based on their ratings.  The ratings don't come from them, keep in mind, so they're not lying about them.  ABC7 might know WGN was overstating losses, totally agree that could be a part of it, but ABC7 is also a more watched station and have much more leverage with advertisers.  But to put the ratings in perspective, less than 50K TV homes were watching those games.  As an advertiser, how much would you pay to reach roughly 50 homes? Depending on when WGN did those deals and how they're structured, their situation may have been that bad. 

 

So what I mean is, say WGN9 is straight up telling the truth, part of the issue could be with their sales department lacking the type of sway ABC7 has for a variety of reasons, or WGN using a sales method more dependent on ratings, ie not packaging deals far in advance or allowing for adjusted rates based on performance, or advertisers could pull out, or deals were being chased long after ratings plummeted.  ABC7 sounds like the top dog in the market, so they will be able to put together more favorable deals based on advertisers wanting to work with them and keep a good relationship re: other programming, not just the Cubs. 

 

Add to that, a game that would pull in 45K on Channel 9, might actually bring in 55 or 60K households on ABC7.  It seems illogical, but it's not.  Carriage and popularity of a network increase or decrease ratings significantly for the same programming.    

[MrSheps]

 

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="MrSheps" data-cid="233040" data-time="1418414032">
 

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Kid" data-cid="233017" data-time="1418389421">

The issue with Extra Innings is they usually only show games from RSNs like CSN or FSN, and not local broadcast channels. They probably would not show Cubs broadcasts on WGN or WLS. So those WGN/WLS games would probably only be on EI under the opposing team's broadcast.


On the other hand, MLB.TV shows both teams' broadcast of every game, no matter what channel it's from.


One note with that is that I think at least the cable version of EI last year included an MLB.TV subscription. I didn't get that last year, but if they do it again, I might do it this year.

Yes, good point, the WCIU broadcasts were never part of it, so I assume neither will WLS, which means you get to know a lot of other team's announcers.  For me though I like having the games on TV because I can record them and comfortably fast-forward.  Has anyone used MLB.TV through something like a Roku or a Apple TV?  I would try it via Roku this season to get the Cubs feed if it's easy to navigate through games, as I usually like to start a game an hour in or so to save time by fast forwarding through commercials and boring sections.     </blockquote>


I have a Roku and have MLBTV, it was great. You can start the games from the beginning or pick an inning to start at. It is nice being able to listen to our own announcers. I may be biased, but, there are a lot of teams out there that have awful announcers. Honestly, I would recommend MLBTV over EI.
 


</blockquote>
Perfect!  I will make the switch this year.  Thanks Kid and Runnys.  Oh, can you fast forward easy as well?  Like say through a pitchers at bat without jumping innings? 

[Destined]

Fast forward through a pitcher's AB? That an NL traitor you are.

 

 

I'll be doing MLBTV again. My only beef with it is the 30 to 45 second delay. That makes Twitter a problem at times, as I have two screens an always have Twitter open on a screen.

[MrSheps]

Good point.  I rarely double screen a game because I so often am watching after they air.  For me I have the opposite problem of having to avoid the score, so staying away from my phone during a game.  I do though talk to family sometimes if I am watching live, so I could see that being an issue.

[rok]

 
The Jon Lester signing wasn’t just good for the Cubs. It also was huge for MLB Network.

 

The dramatic events of Tuesday night pulled in 179,000 viewers to MLB Network’s coverage. That shattered its previous record for the Winter Meetings by 48 percent.

Presumably, many of those viewers were located in Chicago. All in all, it bodes well for the Cubs TV ratings in 2015.

 

The
Cubs will never draw good ratings again until they start winning and/or signing expensive and mediocre, aging free agents.

[MrSheps]

 

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote">
<div> 
The Jon Lester signing wasn’t just good for the Cubs. It also was huge for MLB Network.

 

The dramatic events of Tuesday night pulled in 179,000 viewers to MLB Network’s coverage. That shattered its previous record for the Winter Meetings by 48 percent.

Presumably, many of those viewers were located in Chicago. All in all, it bodes well for the Cubs TV ratings in 2015.

 

The
Cubs will never draw good ratings again until they start winning and/or signing expensive and mediocre, aging free agents.


 

</div>
</blockquote>
The cubs signed an expensive free agent and it led to big ratings, so...

 

Remember when Baez first came up last season and the ratings spiked?  I think that's when the purple line works well.  To me this instance plays more into the thinking of we need big FA signings to draw attention/viewers.  Personally I'm stoked for Lester, but damn, it's the Bryant call up that's going to have me glued to the set!

[Kid]

Waiting for the financial terms to come out might inform the deal better.  Does the tweet say the deal IS worth 750 per or is it quoting "market value" to make a guess?  To your point, WGN may not have been losing 200K per game, but it's hard to imagine they were profiting based on their ratings.  

 

ESPN Chicago reports that sources say the deal actually is for $750K/game, thoroughly disproving both WGN's claims that they were only receiving $50K/game in revenue last season, and certain other arguments about the effect of recent years' ratings (I'm still not debating this again).

 

Also, the Trib reports, as I had guessed, that most of the WLS games will be on the weekends to avoid disrupting the ABC television schedule.  

[rok]

I'm sure ESPN Chicago is loving this given their opportunity to cross-promote their sister station (ABC and ESPN are both owned by Disney). If the report about WLS weekend games is accurate, then my hope that WGN would get stuck with mostly the worst of the worst 45 games looks to be coming true.

[jstraw]

As long as the games are on on MLB.tv and called by Len and J.D. I don't care about the rest of it.

[Runnys]

As long as the games are on on MLB.tv and called by Len and J.D. I don't care about the rest of it.

This is where I'm at too.

[rok]

Thanks for pointing this out, George Castle. Dick.

 

Cubs strike out on ABC 7 history

December 12, 2014 at 3:00 pm | Robert Feder
 
The stunning announcement that Chicago Cubs baseball would be airing next season on WLS-Channel 7 “for the first time in the 68-year television broadcast history” of the team made for a great story Friday.
 
Except that it isn’t true.
 
Contrary to the press release issued jointly by the Cubs and the ABC-owned station — and picked up in virtually every news report on the deal — this isn’t the first time the two have been partners.
 
In 1949, Cubs home games aired on Channel 7 (then under the call letters WENR-TV), with baseball legend Rogers Hornsby as announcer, according to George Castle, a Chicago baseball historian and author of nine books on the Cubs. “Same station, same owner, same channel, different call letters,” Castle said.
 
“It’s easy to overlook the WENR-TV role with the Cubs,” he said. “It was only one season. WGN-TV (Channel 9) and WBKB-TV (Channel 4) also did the Cubs that year with [Jack] Brickhouse and Whispering Joe Wilson, respectively, at the mic. P.K. Wrigley spent $100,000 of Cubs money to build new broadcast facilities for the three stations in 1949.”
 
A spokeswoman for ABC 7 attributed the error in the announcement to the Cubs.
 
“Cubs front office doesn’t know squat about team history,” Castle said. “That’s one of the glaring holes in that franchise.”
 
Friday night update: ABC 7 released the following statement: “The Cub Games have been on the air since 1946. In 1949, the Cubs aired on WENR-TV, a precursor to WLS-TV. 2015 will be the first time the Cubs have aired on an ABC owned station since 1949. WLS-TV would like to thank those who pointed out our station’s oversight, but the most important fact is correct — Cubs baseball is coming to WLS-TV in 2015.”
 

[Butcher]

Who gives a rat's ass? What a douche.

[jstraw]

There's one "glaring hole" in that story...and it has nothing to do with Theo no knowing that there was one year, 65 years ago, that WGN didn't televise Cubs game.

[MrSheps]

 

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="MrSheps" data-cid="233048" data-time="1418419742">
<div>
Waiting for the financial terms to come out might inform the deal better.  Does the tweet say the deal IS worth 750 per or is it quoting "market value" to make a guess?  To your point, WGN may not have been losing 200K per game, but it's hard to imagine they were profiting based on their ratings.  

 

ESPN Chicago reports that sources say the deal actually is for $750K/game, thoroughly disproving both WGN's claims that they were only receiving $50K/game in revenue last season, and certain other arguments about the effect of recent years' ratings (I'm still not debating this again).

 

Also, the Trib reports, as I had guessed, that most of the WLS games will be on the weekends to avoid disrupting the ABC television schedule.  

 

</div>
</blockquote>
Oh, the Cubs got a huge money deal with a stake in ownership for a Cubs net post 2019?  I totally missed that, sweet! 

 

Sarcasm aside, I thought trusting "sources" was dumb?  I mean obviously the sources who know the dollar figure now are to be trusted, the ones saying the Cubs were weakened in negotiations by ratings, or talking about WGN losses are not, right? 

 

Regardless, this doesn't disprove WGN's claims thoroughly and it certainly doesn't disprove ratings hurt them in negotiations, it does the opposite.  They wanted a much larger and complete long term deal and made that known, and every article about this 25 game deal mentions how they were hampered by ratings in negotiations. This is good, but it's not anything like what they were chasing.

 

I got this wrong as I always predicted (or by the end at least held out hope) that the Cubs would still manage to get a big money deal now that would include all games together post 2019, so I find this money to be better obviously but a disappointment overall and I'm sure they do too.  (Unless the rest of the games going are tied to someone who will partner post 2019 and we find that out next week.  I still hold out hope I guess.) 

 

On the very bright side, if they do pull in 750 per for the other games at large as well (which I guess isn't likely but certainly possible) that would make for a very solid bump though until 2020.  I just hoped we wouldn't need to wait and do this all again, particularly if the bubble does burst.  Maybe even if it does, in 2019 the Cubs can be one of the first to take advantage of a new money stream involving online distribution.  Or, maybe wealthy affiliates of the nets (OandOs) see a future in obtaining live sports and selling them to other broadcasters as well, as I'm guess ABC7 has the right to do that for the next 5 years?  Do we know if they have resell rights outside the market?