Teams going longest with home games untelevised

[chris12]

With the announcement that Rocky wirtz and John McDonough will have all Blackhawks home games televised at last, were there any other teams in the four major pro sports that waited a long time to have all their games on television.

 

[ShawnHill1]

Before cable penetration became larger in some areas, a large number of teams in MLB, NBA, and the NHL, rarely if ever (including the occasional network game) televised home games. The Milwaukee Bucks, for instance, are a good example. They didn't start televising home games on a regular basis until the mid-1990s, mostly on Midwest Sports Channel (now FSN North/Wisconsin). This year, they moved all of the televised games to cable only, after televising at least 35 games a year (normally 30 road, 5 home) on their over-the-air network. Chicago and Los Angeles are the only markets (that I think of) where you still have a significant amount of games still airing on over-the-air TV. Here in L.A., every team except for the hockey Kings and our MLS teams (the L.A. Galaxy and Chivas USA), are on local over-the-air TV.

 

[Corky Marlowe]

Didn't the Dodgers home games go untelevised for at least their first couple decades in LA?

 

[ShawnHill1]

Didn't the Dodgers home games go untelevised for at least their first couple decades in LA?

That's another team I didn't think about right away. KTTV would televise only the road games in San Francisco intitally, and when the Padres came into MLB in 1969, those road games from San Diego would be included. Outside of a Game of the Week telecast from ABC or NBC, I think the Dodgers would start televising home games locally sometime in the early 80s, and that was either on a pay-per-view basis or from subscription TV (ON-TV or SelecTV). I don't know when KTTV expanded its Dodgers telecasts to include teams outside of California, I'm guessing sometime in the early 80s also.

 

[Ultimajock]

Before cable penetration became larger in some areas, a large number of teams in MLB, NBA, and the NHL, rarely if ever (including the occasional network game) televised home games. The Milwaukee Bucks, for instance, are a good example. They didn't start televising home games on a regular basis until the mid-1990s, mostly on Midwest Sports Channel (now FSN North/Wisconsin).

...where were you when the Bucks' earliest home games were occasionally telecast over WTMJ-TV/4 and KFIZ-TV/34, using the great Eddie Doucette on play-by-play?...

 

[ShawnHill1]

Before cable penetration became larger in some areas, a large number of teams in MLB, NBA, and the NHL, rarely if ever (including the occasional network game) televised home games. The Milwaukee Bucks, for instance, are a good example. They didn't start televising home games on a regular basis until the mid-1990s, mostly on Midwest Sports Channel (now FSN North/Wisconsin).

...where were you when the Bucks' earliest home games were occasionally telecast over WTMJ-TV/4 and KFIZ-TV/34, using the great Eddie Doucette on play-by-play?...

Not alive yet.

 

[JeeperOne]

Hi everyone:

If we're talking about local OTA rights here, there hasn't been a Nuggets or Avalanche OTA game (Excluding games on NBC & ABC) since the two teams left FSN Rocky Mountain, which had them on KTVD 20 at least once a week.

Since Stan Kronecke (sp?) owns both teams (And probably has a hand in the Colorado Crush and the Major Indoor LaCrosse League team if not other teams too) as well as Pepsi Center (If not the Colorado Rapids) and Altitude Sports & Entertainment, this really shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone. But I think Altitude is going to learn the way that FSN Rocky Mountain did that by having an OTA partner to fall back on really isn't such a bad idea as it beats creating a temporary channel whenever there's a schedule conflict (Which is what they do when the Nuggets & Avalanche are playing at the same time).

Terrible thing to get into doing on a regular habitual basis if you ask me.

Just my $.02 worth

Cheers

 

[Newname]

Didn't the Dodgers home games go untelevised for at least their first couple decades in LA?

That's another team I didn't think about right away. KTTV would televise only the road games in San Francisco intitally, and when the Padres came into MLB in 1969, those road games from San Diego would be included. Outside of a Game of the Week telecast from ABC or NBC, I think the Dodgers would start televising home games locally sometime in the early 80s, and that was either on a pay-per-view basis or from subscription TV (ON-TV or SelecTV). I don't know when KTTV expanded its Dodgers telecasts to include teams outside of California, I'm guessing sometime in the early 80s also.

Prior to 1984, the NBC 'Game of the Week' never aired in the home team's market(prior to 1967, it didn't air in the visting team's market, either). So, KNBC wouldn't have shown a Dodger home 'GOTW' til the mid-80s.

 

[RicoGregg]

Didn't the Dodgers home games go untelevised for at least their first couple decades in LA?

That's another team I didn't think about right away. KTTV would televise only the road games in San Francisco intitally, and when the Padres came into MLB in 1969, those road games from San Diego would be included. Outside of a Game of the Week telecast from ABC or NBC, I think the Dodgers would start televising home games locally sometime in the early 80s, and that was either on a pay-per-view basis or from subscription TV (ON-TV or SelecTV). I don't know when KTTV expanded its Dodgers telecasts to include teams outside of California, I'm guessing sometime in the early 80s also.

Prior to 1984, the NBC 'Game of the Week' never aired in the home team's market(prior to 1967, it didn't air in the visting team's market, either). So, KNBC wouldn't have shown a Dodger home 'GOTW' til the mid-80s.

Some excellent information in the above quotes. It's all accurate. If I can add a couple more pennies' worth of info:

When the Padres entered the majors in 1969, they didn't draw well at all, at least for their first 5 seasons or so. It was expected that the 9 annual home games against the Dodgers would be the biggest draw. They were, but not anywhere near the numbers that the Padres expected. Padres President Buzzie Bavasi blamed the Dodgers' telecasts on Channel 11 as the main reason that the Dodger games in SD didn't draw all that well. Channel 11 had some penetration in SD, but not that much to affect attendance, in my opinion. Cable wasn't much of a factor back then.

A few years earlier in 1966, the Dodgers, as mentioned earlier, only showed games from San Francisco. That season, the Dodgers wound up in a thrilling 3-team pennant race that literally came down to the last pitch of the season, which was thrown by the great Sandy Koufax. The team spent the last 9 games on the road, and the tension for baseball fans was intense. You could literally go from third place to first in one day, and vise versa. Despite pleas from fans and media, the Dodgers would not televise any of the last 9 road games. Afterwards, they took a public relations blistering. The brilliant executive who made the decision not to televise? Buzzie Bavasi, then GM of the Dodgers.

The next season, after all the criticism, the Dodgers started televising more road games, only this time without Koufax, without Maury Wills, without a winning team, and without Buzzie Bavasi, who became the Padres' President. He was about to be fired by Dodgers' owner Walter O'Malley, just as Bavasi's son Peter had been.

About a decade after that, Padres owner Ray Kroc, who turned the floundering team into a winner, told the SD Union that he couldn't fire Bavasi fast enough.