Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent has an idea for pumping more money into his sport, but it would mean an end to the superstations that pump so much baseball into American homes.
It also would take an act of Congress.At issue: a section of copyright law that allows cable television easy access to baseball through local stations broadcasting major league games. Vincent wants it repealed.
Consumer advocates, the National Association of Broadcasters and the cable industry are fighting congressional action, saying it would cheat fans.
The owners of two superstations who own two major league baseball teams also oppose changing the law.
But Vincent says: "Superstations deprive fans of a wide range of options. We wish to provide fans exposure to all baseball teams."
More than a dozen local broadcast stations with local sports contracts are picked up by satellite and sent to cable outlets, but the three that dominate are WTBS of Atlanta, WGN of Chicago and WWOR of New York, with 57.6 million, 34.9 million and 13.5 million cable subscribers respectively.
Hundreds of Braves, Cubs, White Sox and Mets games on the stations glut the market, to the point where fans no longer pay attention to their local teams, Vincent told a recent Senate subcommittee hearing.
They also make negotiating lucrative national broadcast contracts with national networks more difficult, he said.
Others say Vincent - trying to find money for a sport with multi-million dollar player contracts - wants to get rid of the superstations as a first step toward making viewers pay for games individually.
Vincent denies it.
Jody Shapiro, director of Home Team Sports, a regional cable network that transmits Baltimore Orioles games, dismissed the idea that the superstations cut into home team loyalty.
But he said: "I have some sympathy with the notion that having a superstation in a market can affect the gate. If there is a game of national importance on a superstation you may have some people who say they don't want to go out to a game."
Technically, the superstations are local broadcasters who negotiate with their home team for local rights to games. Besides baseball, the stations carry other sports, TV reruns, movies and original programming.