What does MLB expect, fans able to take a day off work or ditch school to watch their favorite teams' playoff games?
The LDS round is a difficult scenario for MLB television-wise. It attempts to broadcast four postseason series on television to people across four different U.S. time zones with many games played on weekdays.
In the regular season, games are generally played around 7 p.m. local time during weekdays, but in the postseason, MLB wants each game in a different time slot.
Try coming up with four different windows that satisfy most of the consumers.
There’s really no right answer. Either the games start too late and end well past a reasonable bedtime for people on the East Coast, or they start too early in the day, and everyone is stuck at school or work.
Personally, I’d choose to have two games in an earlier window, around 6 p.m. EDT, and the other two games at a later window around 8:30 p.m. EDT.
That first window is just late enough for people on the West Coast to get out of school (and maybe even work), and the second is when most of the primetime games start anyway.
There may be some overlap in the games, but TBS, the current broadcaster of the LDS round, has more than enough affiliated networks to cover this potential problem.
Reach the reporter at justin.janssen@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @jjanssen11
