Another development, another jab to some Cardinals fans from broadcast moves out of their control.
The latest smack will come Sunday, when the telecast of the team’s game at home against the Boston Red Sox has been pulled from Bally Sports Midwest by Major League Baseball and moved to the Roku streaming service, on which it will be exclusively shown. Unlike some other MLB streamers, Roku is available for free and will be available to anyone who can access a website — — so that should quell the angst of many.
But fallout from that move is that it will cause a big inconvenience to some fans planning to attend the game — the starting time has been changed from 1:15 p.m. to 12:05 p.m.
It’s only an hour-and-10-minute difference, which might not be that big a deal if the switch was from 3:15 to 2:05 p.m. But with this being much earlier in the day, it could be problematic for people who were planning to take in the ballgame after going to church or having Sunday brunch.
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While it is true that the Battlehawks have a home game at the even more inconvenient-for-some starting time of 11 a.m. Sunday, that is a byproduct of the United Football League coming together only a few months before the season began. That led to the schedule having to be crafted around stadium availability and fitting games into television lineups in which many of the most desirable slots already had been filled.
That certainly is not the case with MLB. The Roku deal was not announced until Monday, and although the time change had quietly been made a few days earlier, that did not come into full light until the TV plan for the game surfaced. So instead of delaying the start of the package for a week or two, MLB immediate implemented it ... leading to short notice for fans planning to attend.
This follows the fan-unfriendly huge distribution mess Bally Sports Midwest, the Cardinals’ local telecaster, has been experiencing for years. Two weeks ago, Xfinity, a division of the Comcast Corp., dropped Diamond Sports Group’s regional sports networks — including BSM — in a financial squabble in which each side blames the other. Impacted by that are some of the club’s fans in outlying areas, especially in Illinois.
Numerous other instances of MLB’s problems with getting its telecasts available to a much wider audience has been well documented, with the latest move coming this week in bankruptcy court where MLB expressed its displeasure with recent developments. All of this isn’t the Cardinals’ fault, as it is a byproduct of Diamond’s ongoing bankruptcy case in addition to MLB policies that include the uniform fiasco this season in which players’ names are small and hard to read.
But no matter who is to blame, it’s the fans who are impacted. The danger for the Cards and MLB is that its customers who find other things to do with their time for one or two summers might discover they don’t miss the cost and effort needed to support the business. The long-term impact could be profound.
Cards in prime time
Another time change for the Cardinals was announced Thursday, but in this instance it's is for a road game. However it undoubtedly will cause some difficulties for fans who had planned to attend, although at least there is more than two weeks’ notice.
The Redbirds' contest on June 2 in Philadelphia has been added to ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball†schedule and thus moves from an afternoon start to 6:05 p.m. (ºüÀêÊÓƵ time). That will make it tough on those who are coming from a significant distance and had intended to be able to get home at a decent hour after attending a game that had been scheduled to begin five hours earlier.
It will be the Cards’ second consecutive appearance on “SNB,†as their home contest on May 26 against the Cubs already had been scheduled. It will be their third time in the package this season, after they were there on March 31 when they played the Dodgers in Los Angeles.
They were on just one Sunday night ESPN game last year.