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- TBS, the national feed spun off from WTBS, has also aired nationally televised games since 2007.
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TBS typically begins game coverage with the pregame show MLB on TBS Leadoff (formerly MLB on Deck), followed 37 or 38 minutes later by the first pitch of the first game. Each day's coverage ends with MLB on TBS Closer (formerly Inside MLB, which is formatted similarly to sister network TNT 's Inside the NBA).
- Baseball Telecasts
First broadcast. After the 1939 World's Fair showed the new technology called television, experimental station W2XBS aired the first televised major league baseball games, a double header between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers on August 26, 1939.
Braves TBS Baseball (or Braves Baseball on TBS) was an American presentation of regular season Major League Baseball (MLB) game telecasts featuring the Atlanta Braves National League franchise that aired on the American cable and satellite network TBS.
The 51 st year of baseball on tbs will highlight some of the biggest superstars and most storied rivalries in the league, including 26 Tuesday night games throughout the 2024 regular season. It will culminate with exclusive coverage of the 2024 American League Division Series and American League Championship Series in October.
- Overview
- History
- Scheduling
- Announcers
- Criticism of TBS's coverage
- Digital on-screen graphics
- References
- External links
Template:Infobox television
(also sometimes referred to as Sunday MLB on TBS during the regular season) is a presentation of regular season and postseason Major League Baseball game telecasts that air on the American pay television network TBS. The games are produced by Turner Sports.
Pre-2007: relationship with the Braves
Atlanta Braves baseball games had been a local staple on Atlanta independent station WTBS (channel 17, now WPCH-TV; which, like TBS, was owned by Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting System) since Turner acquired the team's broadcast rights in 1973, and subsequently gained national prominence when the station was uplinked to satellite in December 1976, becoming one of America's first superstations. Along with Chicago-based WGN-TV and New York-based WWOR-TV, WTBS was one of the few television stations that broadcast local sporting events to a national audience, with some even giving the Braves the title "America's Team". On July 11, 1988, the day before the Major League Baseball All-Star Game from Cincinnati, TBS televised the annual All-Star Gala from the Cincinnati Zoo. Larry King hosted the broadcast with Craig Sager and Pete Van Wieren handling interviews. The broadcast's big draw would've been the Home Run Derby, which TBS intended on taping during the afternoon, and later airing it in prime time during the Gala coverage. The Gala coverage also had some canned features such as highlights from previous All-Star Games, a segment on Cincinnati's baseball history, a video recap of the season's first half and, a slow-motion highlight montage set to "This Is the Time" by Styx frontman Dennis DeYoung. Unfortunately, the derby and a skills competition were canceled due to rain. As a result, TBS scrambled to try to fill nearly an hour of now-open airtime. For example, the Gatlin Brothers, the event's musical guests, who had already played a full concert, were asked to come back out and play some more. Sister network TNT was actually in the running to gain the cable portion of the baseball TV rights beginning in 1990. However, ESPN won the final bid with the league. When Major League Baseball was realigned into three divisions each within the American and National Leagues in 1994, TBS offered Major League Baseball US$40-$45 million a year for rights to another round of postseason games (presumably, matches from the newly created Division Series). Instead, Major League Baseball along with ABC and NBC formed a revenue sharing joint venture called The Baseball Network (which was dissolved after the 1995 season). Meanwhile, CBS was offering $130 million a year to renew its previous contract (a four-year agreement that began in 1990 and ran until 1993) before being shut out, as well. During NBC's coverage of the 2000 Division Series between the New York Yankees and Oakland Athletics, regular play-by-play announcer Bob Costas decided to take a breather after anchoring NBC's prime time coverage of the Summer Olympic Games from Sydney. In Costas' place was Atlanta Braves announcer Skip Caray, who teamed with Joe Morgan before Costas' return for the ALCS. It wasn't just Costas but all of NBC's production crews who were down in Sydney. The Olympics ended just two or three days before the MLB playoffs started that year, so the TBS crew worked the Division Series games for NBC. In 2003, the Braves telecasts on TBS underwent significant changes for the first time in many years, reflecting an increase in the network's rights fee payments to Major League Baseball. In turn, national sponsors could fulfill their advertising commitments by purchasing ads on TBS, in addition to ESPN or Fox. In the process, Don Sutton and Joe Simpson assumed duties as lead commentators, while longtime play-by-play announcers Skip Caray and Pete Van Wieren had their participation on the broadcasts reduced. This was done in an attempt to combat criticism of Caray's on-air "home team" bias and to market its baseball coverage to fans of MLB teams other than the Braves. Meanwhile, the brand Braves Baseball on TBS was replaced by Major League Baseball on TBS. The move was strongly criticized by Braves fans, Atlanta area media outlets and Braves manager Bobby Cox. Over 90% of Braves fans who voted in an online poll conducted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution preferred Caray and Van Wieren to the more neutral broadcasts. The move backfired, and ratings for the TBS broadcasts declined sharply. After that year's All-Star break, TBS brought back Caray and Van Wieren to work with the two analysts, while broadcasts reverted to the Braves Baseball on TBS brand the following year.[citation needed]
2007–2013: Going national
On October 17, 2006, TBS signed an agreement with Major League Baseball which earned the network exclusive rights to all Division Series playoff games, one of the League Championship Series, as well as rights to the All-Star Selection Show held in late June or early July, from 2007 to 2013. A national Sunday afternoon baseball package was also planned starting with the 2008 season. As a part of the deal, the Turner Broadcasting System management decided to limit Braves games to local telecasts within the Atlanta market. On October 1, 2007, the Turner Broadcasting System severed the ties between WTBS and the TBS cable channel, converting the Atlanta station into an in-market independent station that assumed the call letters WPCH-TV, branding on-air as "Peachtree TV". Along with this, Comcast and other cable providers within the Atlanta market began carrying the national TBS feed for the first time. WPCH-TV continued to air Braves games, but they were only broadcast within the team's designated market area and throughout Canada; in the latter case, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission never allowed the TBS cable feed to be eligible for carriage on Canadian cable and satellite providers as a superstation, only giving permission for the Atlanta area signal (whose programming largely overlapped with the national version of the channel outside of public affairs and E/I-compliant programming seen only on WTBS). WPCH would lose television rights to the Braves after 40 years in 2013, when Fox Sports South – which took over production responsibilities for the games from Turner Sports after the Meredith Corporation, owner of Atlanta's CBS affiliate WGCL-TV (channel 46), assumed WPCH's operations through a local marketing agreement formed in 2011 – acquired the regional television rights to the station's 45-game package beginning with the 2014 season. Although the channel is not available in the country, TBS's game broadcasts are carried in Canada on Sportsnet. All games include a Spanish language play-by-play feed that is transmitted via the SAP audio channel. Since TBS assumed rights to the regular season package, several contests that have aired on the network have featured the Braves. On October 7, 2010, TBS carried its first Braves postseason game since the package began: Game 1 of the National League Division Series against the San Francisco Giants (a 1–0 win for the Giants). On the July 2, 2011 edition of the CBS Sports Spectacular, TBS's Atlanta-based Major League Baseball studio crew of Matt Winer, Dennis Eckersley, Cal Ripken, and David Wells presented a 2011 Major League Baseball midseason report. This was followed by MLB 2011: Down the Stretch, which aired on September 24. CBS Sports and Turner Sports have in the past, partnered together to provide coverage of the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament and the Winter Olympics in 1992, 1994 and 1998. On August 29, 2012, The New York Times reported that CBS and TBS may strike a potential alliance for a Major League Baseball television contract effective with the 2014 season. According to the report, CBS "would most likely want only the All-Star Game and World Series", an arrangement almost similar to the one NBC had with Major League Baseball from 1996 to 2000. For the 2012 and 2013 seasons, TBS was awarded the rights to televise both Wild Card Playoff games that occur the day before the Division Series games. In exchange, MLB Network was awarded the rights to televise two Division Series games, rights that previously belonged to TBS. TBS retained the right to air any tie-breaker games to determine the team that moves onto a Wild Card Playoff game which are considered part of the regular season; this occurred in 2013 with a match between the Tampa Bay Rays and Texas Rangers.
Renewals
On October 2, 2012, Turner Sports renewed its contract with Major League Baseball, originally expected to expire in 2014, through the 2021 season. A major change is that the postseason would now be split between TBS and Fox networks; TBS carries most of the Division Series and Championship Series games for one of the leagues per-season (the American League in even numbered years and the National League in odd numbered years), with the opposite league's games conversely carried by Fox (primarily Fox Sports 1, but with occasional games on the broadcast network), and selected games in both carried by MLB Network. The World Series remains exclusive to Fox, while rights to the wild card games remain split between TBS and ESPN. TBS would retain a non-exclusive late-season package of 13 regular season games on Sunday afternoons, down from 26 under the previous contract, and now co-existing with local broadcasts. The contract is valued at $2.8 billion over eight seasons. On September 24, 2020, it was announced that WarnerMedia had renewed its rights through 2028 (aligned with the conclusion of Fox's most recent extension). A major change in the contract is the replacement of TBS's late-season Sunday games with a new, primetime game on Tuesday nights throughout the regular season. Most of the existing postseason broadcasting arrangements remain in place, with TBS holding rights to one wild card game, and two Division Series and the Championship Series for one league annually. WarnerMedia is also receiving additional digital rights for Bleacher Report and "additional WarnerMedia platforms". The value of the contract was reported to have increased to $535 million per-season.
TBS typically begins game coverage with the pregame show MLB on Deck, followed 37 or 38 minutes later by the first pitch of the first game. Each day's coverage ends with Inside MLB (which is formatted similarly to sister network TNT's Inside the NBA). TBS does not show commercial breaks after the third and sixth innings (and also after the ninth in...
On January 28, 2007, TBS' executive producer Jeff Behnke said that Chip Caray "is definitely going to be TBS' lead play-by-play announcer for division series and LCS games." Indeed, TBS announced in April 2007 that Baseball Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn, who has experience in broadcasting with ESPN and the San Diego Padres, would join Caray in the booth. Veteran Braves play-by-play man Skip Caray, Chip's father was vocal about not being part of the coverage in comments he made to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
TBS' studio team was Inside the NBA host Ernie Johnson along with the other member of the 2007 Baseball Hall of Fame class, Cal Ripken On September 24, it was announced that the studio show would also include Frank Thomas, who played for the Toronto Blue Jays during the season. Thomas and other active players such as Curtis Granderson and John Smoltz made guest appearances during the playoffs. The studio coverage is titled Inside MLB. As previously mentioned, in 2007, Don Orsillo and Joe Simpson called the one game playoff between the Colorado Rockies and the San Diego Padres to decide the National League wild card.
In the 2008 season, Chip Caray, Ron Darling, and Buck Martinez formed the lead broadcast crew for Sunday games on TBS. Darling and Martinez have taken turns as analysts. Marc Fein, who was the last TBS Braves Baseball studio host, had the same duties here, providing updates throughout the day from other MLB games. Johnson also hosted from time-to-time.
TBS disclosed its initial roster of postseason announcers on September 18, 2008. In 2008, Dick Stockton called the American Central tiebreaker game between the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins with Ron Darling, Harold Reynolds and field reporter Marc Fein.
In 2009, Chip Caray, Ron Darling, and field reporter Craig Sager called the one game playoff between the Minnesota Twins and Detroit Tigers for the American League Central title.
Brian Anderson took over for Ernie Johnson Jr. as the lead play-by-play man for TBS during the 2011 postseason because Johnson had to care for his son Michael (who suffers from Muscular dystrophy and was placed in intensive care around the same time as the playoffs).
TBS's coverage has been met with criticism by some observers. As with TNT's NBA playoff coverage, MLB playoff games on TBS are not made available to local broadcast television stations in the participating teams' designated market areas. Under the previous contract, ESPN was required to make those games available over-the-air in these local markets.
Following the Philadelphia Phillies' victory in the 2009 NLCS, studio host Ernie Johnson went to the podium to present the championship trophy. Upon announcing what a pleasure it was for TBS to cover the series, the Philadelphia fans responded with a heavy barrage of boos, to which Johnson quipped, "Why, thank you."
Fans of the Pittsburgh Pirates, which in 2013, had its first winning season as well as its postseason appearance since 1992, took TBS to task for not broadcasting the traditional pre-game player introductions, "The Star-Spangled Banner", or ceremonial first pitch during their coverage of the National League Wild Card playoff game against the Cincinnati Reds.
Following Game 1 of the 2016 World Series, Fox affiliate WJW in Cleveland, which would carry the Cleveland Indians' World Series appearance via Fox, aired a brief commercial criticizing TBS, in light of the mistakes and errors that had run rampant throughout their playoff coverage.
2007–2010
The on-screen score graphic during this period covered the entire top of the screen, unlike the Braves TBS Baseball graphic, which only took up the left half of the top. The look is almost identical to that used during Fox's baseball coverage, except that the illustration of the basepaths is near the left side of the screen instead of flushed on the right. The batting order starting lineup used beginning in 2008 resembles that of a cellphone. There is also a pitch tracker that can only be seen on the network's high-definition feed.
2011–2015
With the start of the 2011 postseason, TBS planned to introduce the following •Bloomberg Stats: TBS would use Bloomberg Stats as means to integrate comprehensive statistical information into each telecast. •Liberovision: An innovative 3D interactive telestrator meant to give fans a new perspective of instant replays. •New graphics that intend to feature improved functionality with a nostalgic feel. •Pitch Trax: An in-game technology that illustrates pitch location throughout the games.
2016-present
At the beginning of the 2016 season, TBS introduced new graphics that were used all season including the postseason. The score box, which was originally docked to the top and left edges of the screen, was completely redesigned for 2017 after much criticism during the 2016 postseason for its large size. Like the 2016 score bug, the current one still stands in the top left corner, only it is smaller. In 2020, the score bug was moved to the bottom left corner.
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2.The last time Cincinnati hosted the MLB All-Star Game, things got weird. The Sporting News.
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4.Durso, Joseph. "A Billion-Dollar Bid By CBS Wins Rights To Baseball Games", The New York Times, December 15, 1988.
5.Gerard, Jeremy. "ESPN Will Pay $400 Million For Baseball-Game Rights", The New York Times, January 6, 1989.
6.Going Inside MLB's latest US$3 billion TV agreements. Sports Business News. Archived from the original on 2010-05-11.
Jul 22, 2020 · TBS — and the Braves — really started to get a grip on fans across the country, when Atlanta hired Joe Torre as their manager in 1982. “That really moved the needle for the Braves and the ...
TBS, the national feed spun off from WTBS, has also aired nationally televised games since 2007. MLB itself launched its own cable network in 2009, MLB Network, which would also air several live games a week. And MLB broadcasts have been shown on Fox's various sister cable networks, with Fox Sports 1airing games since 2014.
