This is mostly wrong.

Sure, the Hawks winning helped. It certainly sped things up in the process of reestablishing the brand. But McDonough did many other things that got the dormant fanbase interested again.

Also, you're old enough and have seen enough things that you should know that there are a lot of different things that can happen to put the Sox back on equal footing with the Cubs or surpass them as a brand. Look at the changing demographics in the respective neighborhoods. It's setting up for a dominant run from the Sox. And the Cubs are playing right into by basically taking their games off TV for four years and doing their best to wreck the charming ballpark that is at the heart of their popular brand.

Finally, cable companies aren't going to just keep signing bad deals because someone did before. WGN isn't crying over losing the Cubs. You would think that fact alone might be a wake up call and make some people start questioning what those rights are really worth.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down to get it!

If they sign for half, or a quarter of the Dodgers deal below, this is a huge win for the Cubs. And short of the country falling off an economic clip, it is silly to even posit the thought that this would turn out bad for the Cubs.

Last week, the Los Angeles Dodgers announced a new television contract with Time Warner Cable (TWC), valued between $7 billion to $8 billion, which calls for the creation of a new "SportsNet LA" channel that will be the exclusive home of everything Dodgers.

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That's great. But it seems like you don't understand what's happening. The cable company enters into the contract with the baseball club. They then have to pass on the cost to subscribers, many of whom don't give a shit about the baseball team. They cancel their service when the price goes up dramatically. The satellite providers refuse to play ball. 70% of the market does not get Dodger games. Does that really sound smart to you?

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down to get it!

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The way is being paved. It won't happen overnight. The Cubs are destroying their special park and taking their games off TV. Let's talk again in 20 years.

I'm sure in the 50s when the Sox were drawing 1.1 million to 800,000 for the Cubs nobody thought the Cubs would ever be the dominant team. Things change.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down to get it!

If brokering your time on a channel some cable providers can't get is such a smart idea, a team smarter than the Cubs would have done it by now.

If, heaven forbid, it gets to the point where Bernstein is shilling this move, someone should ask him why he continues to draw a salary from CBS when he could buy five hours of airtime a day from them and sell his own ad inventory. Somehow I don't think Dan would do that.

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You ask Danny whatever you want.

But there are few things that you are unable to comprehend, see or grasp.

Most teams have contracts without an OUT in them.

The Cubs are betting that Theo's plan will work and will come to fruition around the time they have TOTAL control of their broadcast rights.

Taking total control of their broadcast rights when they feel they will be hitting the big time on the field, will reap them 100's of millions of dollars. Read that again. Money counted in the 100's of millions, not the tens of millions. And surely at least $1B dollars.

The potential losses over three or four years would be absolutely dwarfed by the money the Cubs will be printing in 2019.

And if the Cubs begin to win in the mean time, they can make more money brokering then they currently do.

So please tell me again why this is such a shitty move by the Cubs.

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We won't have to wait that long.

If Theo's plan works, this will be an absolute windfall for the Ricketts family.

If it doesn't work, then I still admire the Cubs risking small time current cash for 100 times the potential down the road. And I will still get to enjoy the fact that the Sox are better and Cub fans are still dopes.

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Few in the industry believe the sports broadcast rights bubble will last that long.

Cubs would be better off making a deal now at the current inflated values for sports broadcast tv rights rather than waiting until 2020; when it's unlikely anyone not watching sports will pay for watching sports---as EVERYONE who has cable does today:

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/53 ... hem#!9udKS

The only reason?

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

And two years ago everyone said that Magic Johnson and his group grossly overpaid for the Dodgers.

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The infrastructure of over-the-air television all but precludes broadcasting in high definition on subchannels, particularly the sort of dynamic, graphic-laden picture of a sports telecast (even baseball). Obviously, this isn't a big deal for all the multicasters that show nothing but reruns -- those shows were all standard-def to begin with. Now that we've gotten spoiled with sports telecasts such that they're a preferable alternative to seeing the games in person, SD doesn't pass muster anymore. As I mentioned earlier, the Chicago Wolves are on 26.2. I'd flip over to their games when the Hawks were in intermission, and it was like stepping into a time machine. Now, it could be that the Cubs will finagle a deal that will, say, get one of these channels, if applicable, to shut down an extra subchannel so that there's enough bandwidth to fit two 1080p feeds on one signal, but if you've arrived at the point where all you can do is pay for airtime up front on a subchannel -- not even the primary channel, mind you -- then what kind of leverage do you have to tell them how to run their television station?

There's also the problem -- whether infrastructural or editorial; I don't know enough to say -- of AT&T not carrying subchannels on U-Verse, and of satellite providers not carrying them either. The latter can be fixed by buying a digital antenna and toggling from satellite box to antenna (is this how people happily do it? My family dumped satellite twelve years ago), but if you're already coming out of the gate with a carriage problem that can't be resolved, you're in bad shape. Consider that bars generally have DirecTV, presumably for the exclusive NFL package, and now they can't show Cubs games without putting up an antenna and turning the dish on and off. Kind of a pain in the ass, one would have to think.

And as Hussra said, the bubble won't make it to 2020. With the fix the Dodgers and Astros are in, I'm not convinced it'll make it to 2015. I get your point about betting on themselves for the next five years, but like Bernstein always says about contracts, a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow, and they're indeed forgoing dollars today for dollars tomorrow, dollars that might not even be there if the television industry as we know it is significantly disrupted. If it's a matter of betting on themselves, why not take a low rights fee from WGN -- provided they're still offering one -- for the next five years and then try to strike it big when the Comcast contract ends? If I'm understanding things correctly, it's more a matter of the Cubs feeling that they can't go back after the opt-out and wild demands than the door being shut altogether. Would it look bad to come crawling back? Yes. Would it look worse to put your games on The U-Too? Significantly, in both perception and resolution.

That's how I see it: that there are no advantages to going to a more obscure and lower calibre of broadcasting if it isn't absolutely necessary (and if it is absolutely necessary, then shame on the Cubs for devaluing their programming and getting to this point). Of course, you've made it clear time and time again that you have no respect whatsoever for me or my thoughts, so all I did by answering your request was waste a shit ton of keystrokes.

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It's not about what they do over the next four years.

They are looking to maximize their broadcasting rights when there plan matures.

Small term loss versus a potential windfall in the Billions.

And we haven't even discussed how much differently people will be consuming games in 2020 versus 2015.

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Two-thirds of ESPN's revenue comes from cable and satellite fees. Mostly paid by subscribers who never watch ESPN. It was good for ESPN (and us sports fans) while it lasted but the state of affairs outlined below won't continue. Legislation won't even be necessary but likely will happen. Cable and satellite tv operators need to unbundle and offer a la carte plans or keep losing subscribers as tv show and film watchers get their fix via hulu/netflix/youtube/torrents et al.



http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/53 ... hem#!9udKS

CH, I have Directv.

The Cubs current tv contract sucks. I think they did themselves a disservice by having their games broadcast across three channels and with the creation of WGN America. They created legions of Cubs fans with the Superstation and with their games being on alone (daytime). That's all over now.

It is product dependent. If they succeed, then they'll get plenty in tv money. Lots of short term pain.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Exactly

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But we're already in a period of short-term pain with the rebuilding of the farm system. If they're forgoing television revenue for five years, that's more short-term pain, and don't think it won't affect baseball operations if they're spending money to produce telecasts, a cost no other team is incurring, to my knowledge. How much longer do we have to wait for this team to get its house in order? and for what? We're guaranteed none of the success and all of the failure. It's demoralizing. How am I the only Cubs fan here who feels this way?

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You have lots of others who are pissed. It seems like the majority here hate the Plan.


I'll wait as long at it takes to build a perpetual winner. I want it done right. I am on board 100%.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I think you're living in fantasyland. First of all, you're acting like you're going to go through this painful three or four years and then it's all gravy. Running a baseball team doesn't end. If you think suddenly they're going to win 90 every season and be a World Series contender each year, I would suggest you reconsider.

And I would expect that a whole lot of people are going to be disappointed in the real market value of the Cubs television rights when that time actually comes- good team or not.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down to get it!

Yeah, I'm a Cub fan who is okay with The Plan, but when you say "perpetual winner" you're getting way over your skis.

When the oldest of the young talent are 24, I am ok with being on slippery ground. Other organizations have had nice runs with less money- Oakland, Minnesota, St Louis, and Atlanta. Of course they won't win the division every year, but they should be a contender each year for a decade.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

propose a trade with the Bears: Michael Mc Caskey in exchange for Tom Ricketts.

It's like sending Fredo to Vegas

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

That sure isn't perpetual.

some, Gordon Wittenmeyer, have always classified this whole thing as a fianancial deal. I do agree that is the end game, in the sense that the final product, New Wrigley, new media Deals, team with talent that contends, is worth $3 Bill (or whatever they have as a goal) and then the team is shopped.

The shopping doesnt derail any plans, or effects any of the teams operations.

Then Tommy raises some private money to pay dad back his $1 bill and kick out the siblings.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

They ought to call Eddie Einhorn and ask him what went wrong (or what more should have gone right) with ON/TV. The problem for the Cubs is that in another five years, just when the team becomes competitive, they'll have what Jerry Reinsdorf wanted. New revenue streams, modern stadium amenities, a TV channel of his own, the hope of winning but the burdensome legacy of losing, and the daydream of packed stadiums and the opportunity to monetize everydamnthing.

The Cubs are going from having a piece of a network to having to create their own network, from having a strong affiliation with an iconic Chicago TV station to fabricating a presence on a new station, and going from working with plenty to having a whole lot of nothing. I just have to wonder who has the pockets full of the "Big billions" to buy into a plan that is already failing for others?

Perhaps the bigger problem is that unlike the Dodgers who generated enough buzz with their new ownership to make their product too sexy to pass up, (Tom) Ricketts' honeymoon is all but over and his crying poor (from the need to fuel the Ricketts family trust) is going to make this an even harder sell. Cubs fans and Cubbie nation may think their numbers too great and strong to not let such an endeavor fail but foregoing revenue today for greater revenues tomorrow still means having to accept the losses, which push the team just that much further back on their glorious plan of baseball dominance. They'll have to be great to make the network a success and it will take network money to make the team great.

I'd bet if you asked Einhorn what will be needed for this to be a success, he'd probably say a big ol' bag of billions. Short of that, maybe some locally produced shows from the 44th Ward during the day and a heavy rotation of LGBT soft porn at night. Einhorn probably knows a few people who can help with the latter.

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DRINK BƎTTƎR. @theRIPH

The best-case scenario, which still isn't even a good-case scenario, is that the Cubs get a good relationship going with Fox. They could be on channel 32 for day games and 50 or 32.2 for night games, because no way in hell is Fox pre-empting its prime-time lineup for the Cubs. This will have to do while the Cubs are on CSN because fox in the henhouse Jerry Reinsdorf is refusing to take on more Cubs games while also refusing to let them be on another cable channel. Then in five years, they re-start Fox Sports Chicago as an RSN for the Cubs, though I highly doubt they'll get the Blackhawks to come over from NBC given the league's relationship with NBC and Wirtz's relationship with Reinsdorf. This isn't ideal, but it beats The U-Too.

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I'm with CH. This is a bad move and just when the Cubs think they can create their own thing, that will be passe.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

It's amazing if the Cubs missed out on the billions that a CUBS network would have been worth. It should have been easy money.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Uh oh, this doesn't bode well for future revenue streams:

http://nypost.com/2015/03/24/time-warne ... dger-deal/

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down to get it!

I guess when Forbes says "The White Sox had baseball's third-lowest average local television rating last year, 1.15" you don't have to worry about future revenue streams.

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