On December 14, 1988, CBS (under the guidance of Commissioner Peter Ueberroth) paid approximately $1.8 billion for exclusive television rights for over four years (beginning in 1990). CBS paid about $265 million each year for the World Series, League Championship Series, All-Star Game, and the Saturday Game of the Week. It was one of the largest agreements (to date) between the sport of baseball and the business of broadcasting.
On January 5, 1989, Major League Baseball signed a $400 million deal with ESPN, who would show over 175 games beginning in 1990. For the next four years, ESPN would televise six games a week (Sunday, Wednesday Night Baseball, doubleheaders on Tuesdays and Fridays, plus holidays).
The deal with CBS was also supposed to pay each team $10 million a year. A separate deal with cable television would bring each team an additional $4 million. Each team could also cut its own deal with local television. For example, the New York Yankees signed with a cable network (MSG) that would pay the team $41 million annually for 12 years. Radio broadcast rights can bring in additional money. Reportedly, after the huge television contracts with CBS and ESPN were signed, ballclubs spent their excess millions on free agents.
In the end, CBS wound up losing approximately half a billion dollars from their television contract with Major League Baseball. CBS repeatedly asked Major League Baseball for a rebate, but MLB wasn't willing to do this.
Year-by-year breakdown 1990 As previously mentioned, on January 5, 1989, Major League Baseball signed a $400 million deal with ESPN, who would show over 175 games beginning in 1990. For the next four years, ESPN would televise six games a week (Sunday Night Baseball, Wednesday Night Baseball and doubleheaders on Tuesdays and Fridays), as well as multiple games on Opening Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day.
On April 15, 1990, ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball debuted with the experienced play-by-play announcer Jon Miller joining retired Hall of Fame player Joe Morgan in the broadcast booth. In its first year, Sunday Night Baseball averaged a 3.0 rating. That was double the number that ESPN as a whole was averaging at the time (1.5). By 1998, ESPN enjoyed its largest baseball audience ever (a 9.5 Nielsen rating) as Mark McGwire hit his 61st home run of the season. When ESPN first broadcast Sunday Night Baseball, they would show at least one game from every ballpark. Also, every team was guaranteed an appearance. It was essentially, the television equivalent to a cross country stadium tour.
Meanwhile, Major League Baseball's four-season tenure with CBS (–) was marred by turmoil and shortcomings throughout. The original plan was for Brent Musburger to be the primary play-by-play announcer for CBS' baseball telecasts (thus, having the tasks of calling the All-Star Game, National League Championship Series and World Series), with veteran broadcaster and lead CBS Radio baseball voice Jack Buck to serve as the secondary announcer (which would involve calling a second weekly game and the American League Championship Series). Former ABC color commentator Tim McCarver was hired by CBS to be Musburger's partner while NBC's Jim Kaat was hired to be Buck's. However, weeks before CBS was to debut its MLB coverage, on April 1, 1990, Musburger was fired by the network over what CBS perceived to be a power grab by Musburger in taking on the assignment (at the time, Musburger was CBS' lead college basketball announcer, host of The NFL Today, and was the main studio host for the NBA and had felt that he had been given too many broadcasting assignments by the network).
With Musburger's firing, Buck was moved up to the primary announcing team alongside McCarver. His position as backup announcer alongside Kaat was taken by CBS' lead NBA announcer, Dick Stockton. Studio host Greg Gumbel took over for Stockton as the secondary play-by-play announcer in . Gumbel was in return, replaced by Andrea Joyce, who served as a field reporter for the first three seasons of CBS' coverage. On the teaming of Buck and McCarver, Broadcasting magazine wrote "The network has exclusivity, much rides on them." Joining the team of Buck and McCarver was Lesley Visser (who was, incidentally, married to the aforementioned Dick Stockton), became the first woman to cover the World Series in 1990.
CBS initially did not want to start their 1990 coverage until after the network had aired that year's NBA Finals (which was the last time CBS aired the Finals before the NBA's move to NBC). Therefore, only 12 regular season telecasts were scheduled The broadcasts would have been each Saturday from June 16 through August 25 and a special Sunday telecast on the weekend of August 11–12 (the New York Yankees against the Oakland Athletics in Oakland on both days). Ultimately, four more telecasts were added – two in April and two on the last two Saturdays of the season.
Meanwhile, Jim Kaat earned rave reviews for his role as CBS' backup analyst (which flashed a considerable "good-guy air"). Ron Bergman wrote of Kaat's performance during the 1990 ALCS, "This was a night for pitchers to excel. Dave Stewart. Roger Clemens. Jim Kaat [on commentary]." Despite the rave reviews, Jim Kaat admitted that he was frustrated. He felt that at that point and time, the idea of figuring out what to talk about during a three-hour broadcast had become intimidating. As a result, Kaat would bring notes into the booth, but in the process, found himself providing too much detail. He ultimately confided in his broadcasting partner, Dick Stockton, that he wanted to work without notes. So Stockton hooked Kaat up with then-lead NFL on CBS color commentator, John Madden for a telephone seminar. Madden said if he brought notes into the booth he felt compelled to use them and would "force" something into a telecast. On his seminar with John Madden, Jim Kaat said "Then John told me if he did his homework it would be stored in his memory bank. And if it is important it will come out. If it doesn't, it probably wasn't that important."
A mildly notorious moment came during CBS' coverage of the 1990 All-Star Game from Wrigley Field in Chicago. In a game that was marred by rain delays for a combined 85 minutes (including a 68-minute monsoon during the 7th inning), CBS annoyed many diehard fans by airing the William Shatner-hosted reality series Rescue 911 during the delay.
The 1990 postseason started on a Thursday, while World Series started on a Tuesday due to the brief lockout. Major League Baseball and CBS went with some rather unconventional scheduling during the LCS round, with two consecutive scheduled off-days in the NLCS after Game 2.
After NBC lost the Major League Baseball package to CBS, the network aggressively counterprogrammed CBS' postseason baseball coverage with made-for-TV movies and miniseries geared towards female viewers.
CBS' first year of Major League Baseball postseason coverage in general, proved to be problematic for the network. First and foremost, none of the teams involved in the ALCS (Boston and Oakland), NLCS (Cincinnati and Pittsburgh), and World Series (Cincinnati and Oakland) involved teams from baseball's largest media markets. This more than likely, helped reduce playoff ratings by 9.4% for prime time games and 3.4% for weekend daytime games. This was below the levels of the playoffs the year before, when they aired on NBC.
While the ratings for the 1990 World Series improved to 26.2 compared to 1989, the 1989 World Series (which aired on ABC) was interrupted for 10 days by the Loma Prieta earthquake. All in all, the 1989 World Series was at the time, the lowest rated World Series ever. More to the point, the ratings for the 1990 World Series on CBS were significantly lower than any World Series between 1982 and 1988.
Although the 1990 NLCS lasted six games, that year's ALCS and more importantly, the World Series, lasted only four out of seven possible games. To put things into proper perspective, by one estimate, CBS lost $5 million for each playoff game not played and US$15.4 million for each World Series game not played. At the end of the day, CBS lost $12 million to $15 million on each of the League Championship Series and World Series games not played, for a total of $36 million to $45 million.
1991 After sustaining huge losses (CBS claimed to have lost about $55 million in after-taxes revenue in 1990, which would go up to $170 million at the end of its four-year contract) from 1990's abbreviated postseason (which ended with the Cincinnati Reds shockingly sweeping the defending World Champion Oakland Athletics in the World Series), CBS made several notable adjustments for 1991. Regular season telecasts were reduced to a meager handful. In return, pregame shows during the League Championship Series were eliminated, to minimize the ratings damage.
For CBS' coverage of the 1991 All-Star Game from Toronto, CBS started their broadcast at the top of the hour with the customary pregame coverage. And then, because American President George H.W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney were throwing out the first ball, there was a slight delay from the 8:30 p.m. EDT start. The game eventually started about 15–20 minutes late. Presumably this, along with CBS' low ratings for baseball, and the costs of doing pregame coverage, led to them starting the prime time broadcasts at 8:30 for the final two years of the contract, with little or no pregame content.
The 1991 season was perhaps most noteworthy for CBS having the opportunity to cover the World Series between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves. The seven-game affair between Minnesota and Atlanta earned CBS the highest ratings for a World Series since the 1986 World Series between the New York Mets and Boston Red Sox on NBC.
Earlier in the postseason, CBS' coverage of the ALCS meant that they could not carry the live testimony of Clarence Thomas, whose confirmation to the United States Supreme Court was put into question because of charges of sexual harassment from former staffer Anita Hill. Meanwhile, ABC, NBC, CNN and PBS all carried the testimony.
As previously mentioned, as CBS' baseball coverage progressed, the network dropped its 8:00 p.m. pregame coverage (in favor of airing sitcoms such as Evening Shade), before finally starting their coverage at 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time. The first pitch would generally arrive at approximately 8:45 p.m. Perhaps as a result, Joe Carter's World Series clinching home run off Mitch Williams in 1993, occurred at 12:00 a.m. on the East Coast.
After two years of calling baseball telecasts for CBS, Jack Buck was dismissed in December 1991. According to the radio veteran Buck, he had a hard time adjusting to the demands of a more constricting television production. CBS felt that Buck should have done more to make himself appear to be a set-up man for lead analyst Tim McCarver. Jack Buck's son Joe tried to rationalize his father's on-air problems by saying "My dad was brought up in the golden age of radio, I think he had his hands tied somewhat, being accustomed to the freedom of radio. I'm more used to acquiescing to what the producer wants to do, what the director wants to do."
Buck himself sized up CBS' handling of the announcers by saying "CBS never got that baseball play-by-play draws word-pictures. All they knew was that football stars analysts. So they said, 'Let [analyst Tim] McCarver run the show.' In television, all they want you to do is shut up. I'm not very good at shutting up." Buck though, would add that although he knew Tim McCarver well, they never developed a good relationship with each other on the air despite high hopes to the contrary. Phil Mushnick added insult to injury to Buck by accusing him of "trying to predict plays, as if to prove he was still on top."