Yesterday, it was revealed that ESPN will continue to be one of the national broadcast partners of Major League Baseball, signing a new 8 year, $5.6 billion extension that'll keep the games on ESPN as well as ESPN Radio until 2021. While most media insiders believe FOX Sports, NBC Sports & Turner/TBS Sports have been the primary suitors for MLB in addition to ESPN prior to the "Worldwide Leader's" new 8 year extension, might an unlikely outlet be interested in getting back in the MLB game?

According to the New York Times, CBS Sports is apparently involved in the ongoing MLB TV contract negotiations as part of a rumored "alliance" with Turner Sports. This despite a Sports Business Journal report in June that suggested that CBS wasn't interested in such national broadcast rights. The Times reported as part of a rumored CBS/Turner "alliance" that CBS would only be interested in the MLB All-Star Game & the World Series, an arrangement similar to one NBC had in the '90s. It seems hard to believe, but CBS had the national MLB rights from 1988-1992 before the ill-fated Baseball Network fiasco with NBC & ABC in 1993.

This wouldn't be the first CBS/Turner Sports' "alliance". The 2 outlets shared U.S. Winter Olympic broadcast rights in the early '90s. In 2010, the 2 outlets raised eyebrows, sort of speak, by signing a long-term deal to broadcast & cablecast the Men's NCAA Basketball Tournament worth $10.8 billion on CBS, as well as TBS, TNT & TruTV. CBS & Turner Sports' parent company TimeWarner also have 50% stakes in the CW Television Network, which airs locally on WGN-Channel 9 here in Chicago.

As for FOX, they started broadcasting MLB in 1996, and have 1 more year on their current contract. FOX will continue to air the "Saturday Baseball Game of the Week" the rest of this season, as well as next. The network will also carry the National League Championship Series this October, while TBS airs the American League Championship Series. In the final year of the current deal in 2013, "MLB on FOX" will air the ALCS and the World Series.

Why does it seem hard to believe?

_________________
Kid Cairo's Boers & Bernstein YouTube Channel

Kid Cairo: 2013 March Madness Tournament Winner!

"Cowabunga? Cowa fucking piece of dog shit! This game is diarrhea coming out of my dick!"

Because CBS has hardly been a player in baseball. The NBC Game of the Week was a television institution basically from day one till they lost the rights to CBS, then they got back in it for a while in the mid/late-'90s, and then you've had ESPN and Fox for a long time now. CBS pretty much had just that little blip, and I don't think anyone on either side was particularly happy with it. CBS has always been the football network to me and surely others.

ABC had a decent run with baseball, too, come to think of it.

_________________

The interesting thing about this story is that CBS Sports hasn't exactly been all that interested in major sports since losing the NBA in 1989, MLB in 1993 & the NFL (NFC rights) in 1994 to an upstart "fourth network" at the time by the name of FOX. CBS has been the AFC carrier of the NFL package since 1998 and will broadcast this year's Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans come February 2013.

And yet they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year to carry the NFL. I think that constitutes some interest.

_________________

And the NFL signed a long term extension with CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN & NFL Network last season.

Football, NCAA Tournament, and Golf.

_________________
Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

Whatever Fox does with the Saturday games that they buy the rights to but don't show in certain markets needs to be fixed.

_________________
That's my purse! I don't know you!