Baseball, TV Hit It Off On Deal

Major League Baseball shed its characteristic business gloom Monday by announcing a five-year package of national television deals with Fox, NBC, ESPN and Liberty Sports that will be worth $1.68 billion through 2000.

“The number changed constantly, almost daily,” said Barry Frank, chief negotiator for baseball.

The deal will revive the Saturday afternoon Game of the Week and dispose of this past season’s ill-conceived regionalization of divisional and league championship playoff games that enraged viewers.

“We’re pleased to inform our fans that we’ve been sensitive to their wishes,” said Bud Selig, the acting commissioner.

That teams will be guaranteed $11 million annually is an extraordinary turnabout, in light of the disastrous experiment with The Baseball Network, baseball’s joint venture with ABC and NBC that guaranteed owners no upfront money, and CBS’ half-billion-dollar loss on the sport from 1990 to 1993.

This is how the four-network package breaks down:

Fox gets the Game of the Week (airing a national game or up to four regional ones); the 1997 and 1999 All-Star Games; a League Championship Series and five divisional playoff games each year, plus the 1996, 1998 and 2000 World Series. It will air a 60-minute pregame show on Saturday. Price: $575 million.

NBC gets the 1996, 1998 and 2000 All-Star Games, three divisional playoff games, one LCS, and the 1997 and 1999 World Series. Price: $475 million.

ESPN will extend its current regular-season package of Sunday and Wednesday night games for three more years. Price: $215 million. In addition, it will televise from six to 12 divisional playoff games. Price: $240 million.

Starting in 1997, the newly announced Fox Sports-Liberty Media cable venture will show two nights of baseball on the FX cable channel. It will pluck games from the 1,100 it produces annually on the regional sports channels it owns and runs or produce another one of compelling interest. Price: $172 million.

One peculiar aspect of baseball’s TV future is the inclusion of NBC Sports, whose president, Dick Ebersol, midwifed the birth of TBN with such savvy that NBC and ABC snared the rights to baseball for absolutely nothing.

Ebersol vehemently vowed not to deal with baseball again until the next century because, he said, Selig broke promises to extend TBN for another season to prove its financial viability. Selig said he never made such promises.

But Ebersol was never averse to reversing fields. When baseball told ABC and CBS that they were not offering enough cash, Ebersol was waiting.

“I got over my emotionalism,” Ebersol said, “and it made me realize that we had 15 or 16 years of friendship.”

“Was Ebersol embarrassed by his public reversal?

“Abashed?,” he said. “Me? Never.”

Baseball emerged very fortunate. De spite the game’s endemic woes, Fox was rabidly interested in reviving the Game of the Week, though nobody else was. ESPN lusted to be the only cable carrier of postseason games, Liberty wanted in after being spurned two years ago, and NBC saw how valuably the still highly rated postseason could fit into its prime-time programming strategy.

Resuscitating Saturday afternoon games was on baseball’s wish list, but it could not force any network to carry them.

“Fortunately, we found someone who agreed with us,” said Selig, happy the Fox viewership also is a young one.

Frank said baseball will exercise its option to compel Fox to start its coverage during the first week of the season, starting in 1997. Fox will launch its first season next year on Memorial Day.

The Fox-Liberty element is odd. Its game slate - two days from Monday, Tuesday or Thursday - will compete against other games airing on local TV outlets nationwide. Such lack of protection will hold down ratings and make games less attractive to national advertisers. ESPN is shielded from baseball competition Sundays nights and is free of broadcast competition Wednesday nights.

At $43 million a year, the same as ESPN’s payment, the deal is a risky crapshoot and may not deliver many new subscribers to FX, which is available in 24 million cable homes, fewer than ESPN2’s 26 million and ESPN’s 67.2 million.

Fox-Liberty may be a case being jealous of ESPN. Said ESPN president Steve Bornstein: “We’re won’t surrender.”