Baseball Chat

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Better have cable TV in 2007.

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/v-pfriendly/story/434478p-366046c.html

First round of postseason to go all cable

Wednesday, July 12th, 2006

Baseball announced a new TV deal yesterday that will move all first-round playoff games to cable starting next season. The seven-year contract with Fox and TBS is reportedly worth almost $3 billion.

Fox keeps the World Series, All-Star Game and its exclusive Saturday afternoon telecasts through 2013, as well as rights to one of the League Championship Series. TBS will show all division series games - using TNT as an overlap channel, if necessary - and will also carry 26 regular-season Sunday games starting in 2008, thus requiring those networks to decrease their Braves telecasts. TBS/TNT also will broadcast any wild-card or division-title tiebreaker games beginning this year.

Fox has the ALCS in 2007 and will alternate which LCS it shows from year to year; the rights to the other LCS have not been sold yet.

One other wrinkle in the new agreement is that Game 1 of the World Series - which had previously been on a Saturday - will now be moved to the first Tuesday after the completion of the LCS round.