MLB All-Star Game Historical TV Viewership Update

TVbytheNumbers is still over a month off, but here's an update to change from ratings to actual viewers and to include the 2007 data. (click on the chart to enlarge).

Eight Years Later and I Can’t Buy Entourage over the Internet

On the 8th anniversary of the broadcast.com IPO, I can’t help but wondering, what is HBO thinking about? You can’t even buy a four pack of Entourage episodes on iTunes for $8.00. I believe the $1.99 pricing would work out for HBO, it just needs to price stuff where if you subscribe to more than 2 things, it’d be a better deal just subscribing to HBO. I know, HBO like all the Time Warner schmoes on the music business side that came before it are worried about cannibalization. But there are a few ways around worrying about cannibalizing the HBO subscription service and the DVDs. Update: 7:35am, according to Cuban, it's the 9th anniversary of the IPO and the 8th anniversary of closing the broadcast.com deal, a special day for Mr. Cuban no matter how you look at it!

Does HBO think in 10 years the fate of the DVD is going to be any better than the CD? The DVDs purpose in life at that point will be very cheap media you can cram a lot of stuff on. Otherwise most people will be buying their content digitally already. And since that’s the way content will be sold anyway, why not get in ahead of the curve for a change? Otherwise you just encourage the countless sites up and available on the Internet aimed at providing immediate (and free) access to Entourage, the Sopranos, John in Cincinnati. I can understand not wanting to deal with Apple and although I think it’s dumb to fight that trend, I think Time Warner has a chance to sell its HBO content via its AOL arm. None of that synergy stuff seems to be playing out and it rankles me.

You don’t even have to do this in a way that cannibalizes the mothership or the DVDs. First, make it something that would be high quality on the iPod or iPhone but not so great on the TV. Or make the video high quality anyway – it’s not like iTunes includes any of the director’s or actor’s commentary tracks. There will still be a reason to buy the DVDs until all the content providers have thrown in the towel and realize digital distribution is going to win and they have to even include the good stuff digitally. For now though, that is a ways off.

I don’t know if there’s a penalty for HBO and others not being first movers here. It seems like the penalty is that people who might otherwise buy it wind up stealing it because it’s the fastest way to go. I have to be honest, I pay for HBO and various DVRs and record Entourage. I still find downloading the free torrent is faster than converting the huge file on my DVR into a format for my iPhone (mp4 or m4v) So, I’d already be willing to pay HBO or Comcast a small extra fee for access to “optimized for iPhone/iPod” files of shows I have already paid for in high definition.

The question for me is does HBO think about this at all and decide it’s not right for them or are they just not even thinking about it? A real decision not to do it I couldn’t find fault with, but if HBO isn’t even thinking about it, that’s another story.

I understand as well that the various producers of content may have different deals in terms of digital distribution and I think HBO not necessarily owning those rights right now isn’t a big deal if that’s the case. But I think such things will be a fairly huge deal in the 5-10 year time range.

Some have suggested via the comments under Cuban’s blog entry that perhaps Cubes has broadcast.com II up his sleeves. I hope so, but I think his focus is on owning sports franchises now and judging from the content I can download via hd.net, Cuban has become a content owner now and doesn’t want to cannibalize his content either. The only thing available for streaming/download from hd.net is 2 hours of Dan Rather content that is decidedly NOT in high definition. It’s good enough to look at and watch, but if my whole brand was based on high definition, I don’t know if I’d release much lower than HD quality content to the internet, even in consideration of bandwidth constraints. The file wasn’t so big that even doubling the file size and breaking it up into 2 pieces would’ve curtailed my desire to download it. My only point with this is that unless Cuban is deliberately trying to look “backwards compatible” with what’s available on HD.Net, he’s not looking to do “Broadcast II, and this time we mean it!”

The latest Dan Rather episode (from July 10th) is available for streaming via the Google Video player, and the production value isn’t nearly as good as some shorter stuff, like “Will it Blend: iPhone" via YouTube.

Another Update: 7:40a: In the credit where credit is due, much as this pains me, credit goes to Major League Baseball (MLB!). For $4.99 via iTunes I was able to buy all the coverage of the All Star Week festivities here in San Francisco (the rookie game, celebrity softball game, the Home Run Derby and the All Star Game itself). I thought it was a good value so I downloaded it. I was disappointed (come on, you knew I would be disappointed with something!)it was in 4:3 format instead of 16:9 widescreen, but it's optimized for the iPod, not my big screen. Still a good value for $4.99

Barry to Start in All-Star Game

Apparently all my voting from every e-mail address I own worked. Barry Bonds snuck in and got more votes than Soriano to secure the 3rd starting spot as an outfielder. San Francisco treat indeed!

All Star Game Ticket Strip

they make these things into art. I'm tempted to ticket relay one seat (it will invalidate the strip and issue tickets that aren't as pretty) and frame one. My photography is bad, it's much prettier in real life.

Would you pay $30,000 for 2 Tickets to the All-Star Game?

Update: (6/25 19:32 PDT) the price on these seats was lowered to $24,750, now the total is only @$27,225. they're still for sale as of this writing.

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If so, someone's trying to sell them. They are good seats, I think 2nd row behind home plate just a little diagonal from the left handers batter's box.

Yes, I know it says only $27, 500, but there's the little matter of the convenience fee. Click on the read more link for that picture.

Convenience charge huh? That's....convenient. For MLB at least. These pictures were snapped via the Giants' Double Play Ticket Window. And oh yeah, the HDTVs and cushioned seats -- that totally is going to close the deal. You could buy 7 or 8 fairly high end 58" plasma screen HDTV's and still have enough money left over for a couple of top of the line Lazy Boys, a few cases of beer and a gourmet feast.

A couple of things to note:

1. there's some kind of city ordinance in SF about how you can't stand in front of the ballpark and sell tickets for more than face value. But if you have a computer, it's totally fine and MLB is happy to take a 10% commission.

2. The actual cost of my tickets, which are good, but nowhere near that good was $1167 for 2 seats. But those seats were still only $220 more (total). Here's the table of face values from the Giants. My seats are "Premium Lower Box" and the $30K seats (just for the All Star Game) are Field Club.

MLB All-Star Game Ratings 1967-Present

Can MLB/FOX make it two consecutive years of ratings increases?


I doubt it. The phrase "Lowest rated ____ in history" is going to continue its trend. These lines are all down for everything but the Super Bowl and NASCAR.

But this year is special. Controversy...building, mounting, controversy. It will build faster if Barry hits a few more homeruns. At his current pace he won't break the record before July 10, but stranger things have happend. Either way, the Bud vs. Barry controversy is brewing.

Will this controversy be good for MLB ratings? Perhaps. If the downward trend continues though, no doubt it will be blamed (rightly or wrongly) on the impurity of the game and dislike of Bonds. Looking at the overall trendline I would conclude if the ratings go up measurably vs last year, Barry ought to get some credit for that (even if they just tuned in to hate him). If the ratings go down, I'd attribute it to the trend. Bill Plaschke (who I do enjoy, but who like anyone else can be a dope sometimes) will blame it on Barry.

I'll probably repost this chart again in a few weeks, but you people in the know enjoy getting in on things before the hoi polloi.

P.S. TV by the Numbers is coming Fall '07.