Baseball Night in America

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Baseball Night in America is the name for ABC and NBC's Major League Baseball television coverage during the 1994-1995 seasons. The series was apart of a joint-venture between ABC, NBC and Major League Baseball called The Baseball Network.

[edit] Overview

Baseball Night in America was the first prime time, nationally televised, Major League Baseball television series to air on over-the-air television since ABC's Thursday Night Baseball in 1989. It for all intents and purposes, replaced the now abolished (at the time) Saturday afternoon Game of the Week concept (last seen on CBS in 1993).

Baseball Night in America premiered on July 16, 1994.

[edit] Schedule

After the All-Star Game was complete, ABC was scheduled to televise six regular season games on Saturdays or Mondays in prime time. The networks had exclusive rights for the twelve regular season dates, in that no regional or national cable service or over-the-air broadcaster may telecast a Major League Baseball game on those dates. Baseball Night in America usually aired up to fourteen games based on the viewers' region (affiliates chose games of local interest to carry) as opposed to a traditional coast-to-coast format.

NBC would then pick up where ABC left off by televising six more regular season Friday night games. The regular season games fell under the Baseball Night in America umbrella.

[edit] Start times

Every Baseball Night in America game was scheduled to begin at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time (or 8:00 p.m. Pacific Time if the game occurred on the West Coast). A single starting time gave the networks the opportunity to broadcast one game and then, simultaneously, cut to another game where there was a break in action.

[edit] Exclusivity

Baseball Night in America held exclusivity over every market. This most severely impacted markets with two teams, specifically New York (Mets and Yankees), Los Angeles/Anaheim, Chicago (Cubs and White Sox) and San Francisco/Oakland. For example, if Baseball Night in America showed a Chicago Cubs game, this meant that nobody in Chicago could see that night's White Sox game and vice versa.

See also: List of NBC television affiliates (by U.S. state) and List of ABC television affiliates (by U.S. state)

[edit] Anchors and game commentators

Greg Gumbel hosted NBC's coverage in 1994 while Hannah Storm took over Gumbel's duties in 1995. Meanwhile, John Saunders hosted ABC's coverage.

Normally, the broadcasting network chose one game as its "national" game, which was usually the game with the largest distribution across the network, and assigned its top broadcast crew to it. For NBC, this was Bob Costas, Joe Morgan and Bob Uecker, while ABC used Al Michaels, Tim McCarver and Jim Palmer. For the remaining games, usually announcers who represented each of the teams playing in the respective games were paired with each other.

The regional telecasts featured local legendary play-by-play voices from the teams matching up in the contest. For the first time (before the internet, XM Radio, and MLB Extra Innings) fans from other cities were able to hear Jerry Coleman, Ken "Hawk" Harrelson, Dave Niehaus, Greg Papa, and many others for the first time doing live play-by-play. ABC and NBC would use their own announcers for the Division Series and League Championship Series.

[edit] See also

• Major League Baseball on ABC
• Major League Baseball on NBC
• Football Night in America
• Hockey Night in Canada