Wednesday Night Baseball

Last updated
Wednesday Night Baseball
Country of originUnited States
No. of seasons32
Production
Running time3 hours (approximate)
Original release
Network ESPN
ReleaseApril 18, 1990 (1990-04-18) –
September 29, 2021 (2021-09-29)
Related

Wednesday Night Baseball was a live game telecast of Major League Baseball every Wednesday night during the regular season on ESPN that was broadcast from 1990 to 2021. Beginning with the 2022 Major League Baseball season, ESPN significantly reduced their MLB schedule, which included cutting most of their Wednesday Night Baseball games.

Contents

On ESPN, the game started at 7:00 pm ET, following SportsCenter , and usually lasted around three hours with an hour-long Baseball Tonight following the game leading up to the 11:00 pm ET SportsCenter (1:00 am ET for September games with Baseball Tonight moving to ESPN2 at 12:00 am ET). Every April some broadcasts aired on ESPN2 due to ESPN's priority with Wednesday NBA coverage.

Wednesday Night Baseball was not exclusive, as it is usually blacked out in the teams' local markets, where the respective local broadcasters could still air the game, unless local broadcasters chose not to televise the game.

History

The program debuted in 1990, when ESPN first acquired MLB rights. This gave ESPN to have Sunday Night Baseball and Wednesday Night Baseball. From 2000 to 2005, broadcasts consisted of a doubleheader, usually airing the first game at 7:00 pm ET on ESPN and the second at 10:00 pm ET on ESPN2. The second part of the doubleheader was discontinued after the 2005 season in favor of regular broadcasts of Monday Night Baseball .

The issues with the program were forecasted almost immediately: a reviewer in 1990 stated that in order to survive Wednesday Night Baseball has to become a staple like Major League Baseball Game of the Week which will "strain the cable marketers to their limits", as there is only so much sports programming viewers can watch and pay for. [1]

Wednesdays also formerly included an afternoon game, called ESPN DayGame which aired typically at 12:30 pm or 1:00 pm ET on ESPN, making Wednesdays ESPN's primary day of baseball, as games aired both in the afternoon and in primetime. However, ESPN DayGame was also discontinued following the 2006 season.

In 2021, ESPN agreed to a new contract with MLB through the 2028 season. However, the deal included only around 30 exclusive broadcasts, 25 of which took place on Sunday Night Baseball, [2] [3] [4] [5] ending the regular broadcast of Wednesday Night Baseball.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Major League Baseball on television</span> Overview of coverage of American professional baseball on television

Major League Baseball (MLB) has been broadcast on American television since the 1950s, with initial broadcasts on the experimental station W2XBS, the predecessor of the modern WNBC in New York. The World Series was televised on a networked basis since 1947, with regular season games broadcast nationally since 1953. Over the forthcoming years, MLB games became major attractions for American television networks, and each of the Big Three networks would air packages of baseball games at various times until the year 2000. Fox would rise to major network status, partially on its acquisition of MLB rights in 1996; Fox has been MLB's primary broadcast television partner ever since.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Football League on American television</span>

The television rights to broadcast National Football League (NFL) games are the most lucrative and expensive rights of any sport in the world. Television brought professional football into prominence in the modern era after World War II. Since then, National Football League broadcasts have become among the most-watched programs on American television, and the financial fortunes of entire networks have rested on owning NFL broadcasting rights. This has raised questions about the impartiality of the networks' coverage of games and whether they can criticize the NFL without fear of losing the rights and their income.

<i>Baseball Tonight</i> US television program

Baseball Tonight is an American television program that airs on ESPN. The show, which covers the day's Major League Baseball action, has been on the air since 1990. Its namesake program also airs on ESPN Radio at various times of the day during the baseball season, with Marc Kestecher as host.

Major League Baseball on ESPN Radio is the brand name for exclusive play-by-play broadcast presentation of Major League Baseball on ESPN Radio. The coverage has most recently been presented by Indeed, along with AutoZone for the postseason; previous presenting sponsors included Wendy's, Barbasol, Nesquik, DraftKings, Xerox, AutoZone, Excedrin, United States Postal Service and Mercedes-Benz.

<i>Sunday Night Baseball</i> American live sports television program

Sunday Night Baseball is an exclusive weekly telecast of a Major League Baseball game that airs Sundays at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT on ESPN during the regular season.

<i>Monday Night Baseball</i> Television series

Monday Night Baseball was an American live game telecast of Major League Baseball (MLB) that aired on Monday nights during the regular season.

A doubleheader is a term used by television networks to refer to two games involving the same sport that are shown back-to-back on the same network, even though the events do not involve the same two teams. A doubleheader purposely coincides with a league's scheduling of "early" and "late" games. In North America, games usually start at the same time period in different time zones. The concept is less often extended to three games—a tripleheader—or, much more rarely, a quadrupleheader of four games.

<i>ESPN Major League Baseball</i> Promotion of Major League Baseball on ESPN

ESPN Major League Baseball is an American presentation of live Major League Baseball (MLB) games produced by ESPN. ESPN's MLB broadcasts have also aired on sister networks and platforms ESPN2, ABC and ESPN+.

In the United States, sports are televised on various broadcast networks, national and specialty sports cable channels, and regional sports networks. U.S. sports rights are estimated to be worth a total of $22.42 billion in 2019, about 44 percent of the total worldwide sports media market. U.S. networks are willing to pay a significant amount of money for television sports contracts because it attracts large amounts of viewership; live sport broadcasts accounted for 44 of the 50 list of most watched television broadcasts in the United States in 2016.

Major League Baseball has rules for exclusive broadcasting, called 'blackout' rules, which bar certain areas from watching livegames.

<i>Thursday Night Baseball</i> US television program

Thursday Night Baseball is the de facto branding used for live game telecasts of Major League Baseball on Thursday nights.

In September 2000, Major League Baseball signed a six-year, $2.5 billion contract with Fox to show Saturday baseball, the All-Star Game, selected Division Series games and exclusive coverage of both League Championship Series and the World Series.

On August 28, 2012, it was announced that ESPN and Major League Baseball had agreed on a new eight-year deal that increased ESPN's average yearly payment from about $360 million to approximately $700 million.

<i>Sunday Afternoon Baseball</i> Branding for MLB games held on Sunday afternoons

Sunday Afternoon Baseball is the de facto branding used for nationally televised live game telecasts of Major League Baseball games on Sunday afternoons during the regular season.

From 2014 to 2022, CBS, NBC, and Fox, as well as cable television's ESPN, paid a combined total of US$20.4 billion will pay $39.6 billion for exactly the same broadcast rights. The NFL thus holds broadcast contracts with four companies that control a combined vast majority of the country's television product. League-owned NFL Network, on cable television, also broadcasts a selected number of games nationally. In 2017, the NFL games attracted the top three rates for a 30-second advertisement: $699,602 for NBC Sunday Night Football, $550,709 for Thursday Night Football (NBC), and $549,791 for Thursday Night Football (CBS).

Tuesday Night Baseball is the de facto branding used for nationally televised live broadcasts of Major League Baseball (MLB) games in the United States on Tuesday evenings during the regular season.

<i>MLB Sunday Leadoff</i> Baseball games on Peacock

MLB Sunday Leadoff was an American presentation of Major League Baseball (MLB) games produced by NBC Sports for the NBCUniversal-owned streaming service Peacock. One game each season was simulcast on NBC. It was NBC Sports' first national MLB package since 2000.

References

  1. ↑ Kohn, E. H. (4 March 1990). "Viewers Will Pay if Cable TV's Gamble Fails". St. Louis Post-Dispatch .
  2. ↑ Hughes, Katie. "The Walt Disney Company, ESPN and Major League Baseball Reach Long-Term Rights Extension for Fully Exclusive, Marquee Schedule". ESPN Press Room (Press release). Retrieved 2021-05-23.
  3. ↑ Harrigan, Thomas (May 13, 2021). "MLB, ESPN extend deal through 2028". MLB.com. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  4. ↑ "ESPN extends deal to air MLB games through '28". ESPN.com. 2021-05-13. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  5. ↑ Bucholtz, Andrew (2021-05-13). "ESPN announces new MLB deal through 2028, with TV broadcasts dropping from 90 to 30 annually but remaining ones all exclusive". Awful Announcing. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.