Say it ain’t so, ol’ reliable TV remote.
You can’t even call putting Sunday’s 11 a.m. Yankee game on Peacock the final straw. Because we all know it’s not going to get much worse before it gets better, this time. No, it’s simply just going to get much worse. And we all know why, too. Because the answer to a million out of a million questions? It’s exactly what you think it is.
Joining the wave of major sport broadcast creativity is one thing; but you don’t have to reject the demographic that actually still watches entire games first-to-last pitch to do it. Recently, Major League Baseball has faced blowback from its older fan base for rolling out a questionable, and gradually less rhyme-and-reason orderly, slate of games exclusively carried by streamers like Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, and, as of Sunday morning on the local front, Peacock. This newer platform is the streaming service for content attached, bound and tied to NBC, a network that hasn’t had a relationship with MLB period since the early 1990s.
You can’t make this up.
Sadly, nor can you expect ample compromise anytime soon. Amazon owns 20 percent of YES Network, the regional sports giant that changed the game shortly after the turn of the century with its programming weaponry. Yet, in the same year the YES Network celebrates 20 years of captivating the “no-longer-deprived” Bronx Bomber-loving masses who could, like never before, turn to the same channel at 1:00 or 7:00 every day six months a year for their regular-season ballgame fix, the train is now Sister Christianlessly motorin’ full-steam backwards.
“Silent Generation” survivors hustled around a radio before video killed its star. Their “Baby Boomer” children eagerly awaited that once in a blue moon chance of nationally televised fare for their favorite players under the primetime spotlight. And their children, per the will of the egregiously Hall of Fame-omitted George Steinbrenner’s foresight to team-up Yankee President Randy Levine and sports TV exec John J. “Flip” Filippelli on this experimental little project called “Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network,” never had to wonder what their team was up to ever again. Thanks to YES (and its infinite copycats), fans could finally live out the season ticket-holding dream from the confines of their own domains, day-in day-out without putting themselves in the irredeemable red.
Until now.
Understandably, the game that seems to get in its own way every chance it gets, with regard to re-engaging the disillusioned, attention-deficient youth with a largely unimpactful “pace of play” agenda, is undeniably following the money. And just as understandably, this isn’t their first rodeo; they’re not going to tell you that outright. Thus, they’re instead going to “spin-zone” chalk this up to being a “mere inconvenience” on the path to greener payoff; “growing the game” for kids as they grow into adults, because kids aren’t glued to cable TV anymore – they’re hooked on streaming.
While that may be true, they’re certainly not streaming ballgames en masse. Especially not on Friday night. Save for those swept under the spell of undying traditionalism, the majority are consuming the sport by the highlight reel scroll via Instagram, TikTok and so forth.
If your so-called master plan really is tailored to reeling in the pre-and-currently adolescent, then you’re doing a piss-poor job. Because in failing to draw them away from whatever else has grasped them, you’re losing senior citizens who earned the right to, and by God, live to, watch every moment of every single game. Unlike kids who, sadly, plea indifference at this current juncture. In this day and age, “Gen-Zers” who truly love baseball don’t have time to watch it when they’re playing on two travel teams, a town team and also serve as a hired gun for countless others. All the while, they’re struggling to reconcile with the 7-out-of-10 failures that come with the territory, because when would they have learned to problem-solve? All they are exposed to, after all, is their favorite player’s prowess, and none of their pitfalls, on their feeds. When did America’s pastime become the all-or-nothing fantasy it isn’t, instead of the dreamlike reality it was until recently?
The situation as it stands: sports talking heads with the platform to speak to and for the common fan are stifling justified grievances upon arrival and essentially spitting in the face of what fandom is all about. Even the best in the business have turned heel. How long has it been since they weren’t able to go to every game they want to with the best seats in the house on the company dime?
To the people most impacted by this storm of burden: we at The Messenger hear you and are here for you, because we’re hurting too. The more die-hard the Yankee fan, no matter what age they are, the more likely one of their foremost recurring nightmares encompasses that “fear of missing out” pathology; where the Yankees are playing so well, in fact, they’re the best in show once again as they should be, and you haven’t been following their mad rush of successes one iota.
Tell me, Yankee fans, even those utterly dialed into the technological times: how many magical comebacks, near “nono’s” or simple slugfests-for-victories have you missed two months into this rockin’-and-rolling 2022 season because you had no idea where to find them?
This shouldn’t be allowed. There is nothing that says streamers can’t be involved; they are the future, and aren’t going anywhere. But as we outlined last month, the NFL occasionally simulcasts on Nickelodeon. Children can watch their beloved athletic role models get interviewed by “kid journalists,” or be impromptu slimed while SpongeBob and Patrick Cam Newton-dab it up in the background. And their casually day-drunk dads don’t have to be denied a single Colin Collinsworth slide-in either, because nothing screams “ManCave” like hot wings, bleu cheese and two TVs.
You just know where all of this is heading, too: your team, whether it’s the Yankees or not, will have a team by the jugular in the playoffs, to the point where it’s high time for elimination gamesmanship. And guess what? You’re going to have to move some serious assets around to work in purchasing a subscription to Paramount+ in order to see them advance live. For what can possibly speak to the current state of the game better than viewing it in the same media space where you’re afforded exclusive access to all things Jackass?
That’s baseball, Suzyn. But it doesn’t have to be if enough of us say “nay” today.
