Twins Bound To Cable Cord

Image via WikipediaFirst, a history lesson.  In 1960, the year before the Washington Senators moved to Minnesota, the only baseball that was available on broadcast television in the Twin Cities (no cable or ESPN then) was on Saturday afternoons.  ABC, CBS and NBC had contracts to show games in areas which did not have Major League baseball, because the owners feared televising games in the home markets would hurt the gate.  A national TV deal would not come until 1965.

After the Twins arrived, the network telecasts were gone, except for the All Star Game and the World Series.  In their place were 50 games on WTCN-TV (now KARE), most of them on the road, and that's been it for most of the next two decades.  It was great to follow the progress of Harmon Killebrew and Tony Oliva on black-and-white TV, but the home run feats of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, and the stars of the National League became just a rumor to those of us in the Upper Midwest.

Fifty years later, if you want to follow the progress of Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau and you don't have a cable or satellite subscription, you're out of luck.  The Twins and Fox Sports North announced that they will televise 150 games exclusively on cable.  The only games on broadcast TV will be eight Saturday games as part of Fox's game of the week, but that's only because the Twins won the American League Central Division last year.  Oh yes, and the All Star Game and World Series will also be seen on Fox.

The timing of this announcement, to be brutally honest, is not the greatest.  Not when Target Field is a year old, and seats are limited and pricey.  Not when the Vikings are clamoring for a new stadium to replace the Metrodome.  Not when most people aren't feeling the economy recovering.  What logic is there to build ballparks and stadiums at public expense if the public can't afford to buy a ticket or a cable package, and their lifeline of free and over-the-air broadcasts are taken away?

What about the future of broadcast TV itself?  They have been losing more and more ground to cable, to the point where they're flirting with irrelevancy--if they're not there already.  Oprah Winfrey is trading in her daytime talk show for her own cable channel.  College football's Bowl Championship Series was just shown on ESPN.  Soon more big events such as the World Series and the Super Bowl will move from broadcast to cable.  For those who only have rabbit ears and a digital box, you'll be stuck with reality shows and infomercials.

If you still insist on following the Twins, there's always radio.  KSTP-AM recently re-upped for another hitch as the team's Twin Cities affiliate, in spite of complaints about 1500 ESPN's reception past University Avenue.  What's notable is that this is John Gordon's last season as the Twins' main play-by-play guy, a job he has held since the death of Herb Carneal.  Gordon will be doing fewer games, so former Twins TV voices Bob Kurtz and Ted Robinson have been brought in to call a number of games.

Professional sports teams are a business.  We know that.  But they are also a public asset.  If they want to remain in the good graces of the community they serve, they have to make their product available to as many people as possible.  If they don't, they risk becoming a rumor just like Willie, Mickey and The Duke.  It's their money, after all.