ESPN Contract Riles Broadcasters : Baseball Pact Viewed as Threat to Free Televised Sports

Broadcasters are taking aim at the ESPN cable network in a new campaign to preserve free, over-the-air televised sports.

Viewers “are getting something now for free that in the future, if the tide goes the way it has, they are going to have to pay for,” said Daniel Berkery, an executive of WSBK-TV, Boston.

ESPN earlier this year snagged a four-year, $400-million contract with Major League Baseball to carry games Wednesday and Sunday nights. Outraged broadcasters were shut out, and they said Thursday they are going to fight--on Capitol Hill if necessary.

Television executives from stations with baseball broadcast rights in 24 of the 26 Major League Baseball cities said they will meet with ESPN and major league officials to demand access to Wednesday and Sunday games, said John Serrao, chairman of the Assn. of Independent Television Stations.

“An immediate effort will be made to seek the elimination of the exclusive restrictions on the Wednesday and Sunday night blackouts,” Serrao said. “These blackouts on free, over-the-air TV are contrary to the public interest.”

Local TV stations that already had contracted with individual baseball teams to carry a certain number of games during the season have no access to Wednesdays and Sundays, the station executives said. Meanwhile, regional cable sports networks can show the games, the executives said.

Local broadcasters have no legal recourse because Major League Baseball agreements supersede contracts made by individual teams, Berkery said.

The broadcasters said they will urge Congress to hold hearings “to investigate the alarming siphoning of sports from free, over-the-air television.”

They said they were given assurances in meetings with Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.) that their concerns will be heard on Capitol Hill.

Officials at the National Cable Television Assn. in Washington were out of the office and not available for comment. But the NCTA has said that local broadcasters are showing 40% more professional baseball games now than in 1975 and that cable is not siphoning away free TV sports.