Good news, White Sox fans. Cubs’ ownership may be driving off a cliff
with Marquee, their new cable venture.
Once it gets up and running, presumably in 2020, the network will mean
no more free broadcasts outside of a possible “game of the week” on Fox.
This is how team president of
business operations Crane Kenney explained it in yesterday’s Tribune: “We think the new network is going to give
our fans unprecedented access and a richer, deeper connection to the
team.” Richer for whom? Notice that Kenney didn’t mention cost. And it will cost you, Cub fans.
Marquee will charge cable
providers like Comcast, who in turn will pass the cost on through higher
rates. They say what goes up, must come
down, but the Cubs apparently believe otherwise. Similar network ventures for the Dodgers,
Yankees and Astros have had mixed results, and cable rates have been so high
for so long that consumers are beginning to flock to streaming
alternatives. Oh, and who wants 24/7
programming centered on the Cubs? I hear
ex-Cubs’ pitcher Ryan Dempster wants to have a talk show on the new
network. Personally, they’d have to pay
me to watch.
The irony here is that the White
Sox did something similar nearly forty years ago when Jerry Reinsdorf put Sox
games on pay-TV. This left the Cubs on
WGN. That was free for Chicago-area
viewers and a bargain for cable viewers nationwide back in the days when cable
packages were relatively cheap. Hardly
anybody wanted to pay to watch the Sox while all Chicago—and the U.S., for that
matter—fell in love with the slightly daft, grandfatherly version of Cubs’
announcer Harry Caray.
And now, after all these years,
the Ricketts family wants to return the favor.
I can only wish they crash and burn the way Reinsdorf did. Tickets for Cubs’ games are already among the
most expensive in baseball. Up until
now, at least, fans priced out of the Wrigley experience could still see games
on free TV or a cable station that also broadcast Sox, Bulls and Blackhawk
games. But starting soon, Cub fans won’t
even be able to do that.
Oh, crash and burn, please, I beg you.
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