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Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Nobody.
Bally Sports got bought by Sinclair Media and Sinclair promptly drove it into a MFing mountain.
This was wholly a product of the Fox Sport group getting purchased and parted out. And I don't imagine MLB expected that to happen. The Regional Sports Networks were a perfect solution for baseball - baseball is largely a regional sport. The teams get followed by their local fanbase but it hasn't generated a true 'national' market for probably 50 years. There are just too damn many games played for folks to care about any single game on a Thursday where they don't have a rooting interest.
But the RSNs addressed that perfectly and brought a level of access that was largely unprecedented. What we have now is somehow STILL better than what we had in, say, 1997. But it's certainly a roll-back of 25 years of progress on that front.
It's a mess. But at least as it relates to this specific mess, I'm not positive there was anything else that MLB could've done.
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Baseball has the perfect setup waiting to keep a regional model with national reach. Take all local rights in house - have games on MLB Network. Localize it where each region gets their teams games. In the actually city, simulcast the games on a local over the air television station. I'm sure one of the CWs or similar would love to have the Cardinals or Royals games on every night. Then stream the rest on MLB.TV where you pay for what kind of package you want.