Primetime Can Be Anytime: Make the World Series an Afternoon Spectacle Again
The 2018 World Series was quite a whirlwind, as we saw one of the best teams this millennium take on a franchise that has struggled consistently in making it to the promised land despite the amount of talent and payroll. The Boston Red Sox taking on the Los Angeles Dodgers sounds like a match made in television ratings heaven, and it felt as though it was going the distance. But a variety of factors made this the shortest World Series since the 2015 Series which had the Royals celebrating their title in New York City. And just like in the 2015 World Series, a deciding moment was a poor managerial decision as to when to pull the plug on the starting pitcher.
Dave Roberts is probably going to lose his job because of the implosion of Game 4, which saw the Dodgers blow a four-run lead in the final innings and give Boston a 3-1 advantage that would be impossible to climb out of, especially since Game 6 and 7 would have been in the far-colder and more hostile Fenway Park. Analytics was chosen above sticking with the hot hand or altering the strategy the slightest, and it cost them dearly. But we aren’t really here to discuss the series, because enough talking heads will dwell into familiar details like how the Red Sox are built to eat planets, David Price finally conquered his demons that stretched from his Tampa Bay days, Clayton Kershaw picking the worst time to prove that his best years are behind him, and lastly Manny Machado somehow looking very disinterested.
Side-Note: Everyone here is arguing that Manny Machado has always been a lazy ballplaying talent, but the 2017 World Baseball Classic definitely disproves this. I have no idea what happened to Machado this season, but he cost himself at least 75 million dollars because of the ho-hum efforts in the playoffs.
We are here to ponder why in the hell does Major League Baseball continue this ridiculous tradition of starting games at 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time.
If Major League Baseball cared about ratings, then they wouldn’t exert so much efforts on keeping the programming throughout the season as locally-friendly as possible, while limiting the amount of prime time games. Baseball may never see the high marks of an NFL Sunday, but that’s fine because during the summer nearly every single team reigns supreme in their television market whether the games run in the afternoon or at night. Even a team with a reputation of having no fans like the Tampa Bay Rays scores very good shares on evening ballgames. So why would there be any sort of push for high marks in the nationally-televised World Series when it’s been proven that baseball will find their viewership regardless of time?
8:00 first pitch times during the fall is ratings suicide unless you have a truly excellent matchup or storyline. The 2016 World Series featured two curses, with one finally on the way to being broken, hence the excellent ratings. The 2017 World Series saw a baseball team emerge from a terrible hurricane going up against the most popular team in the West Coast. But 8:00 P.M. in the fall on school nights or on the weekend when most people are going out is simply bad decision-making. This isn’t the 80s or even the 90s, its time to adjust things.
The NBA Finals can offer the 8:00 and even 8:30 timeslot because their championship round is always in June, which of course is during the summer when there’s no school, minimal university activity, more vacations, more leisure time. The Stanley Cup falls around the same time slot, allowing them to also start later. Of course, the Super Bowl created the perfect strategy by announcing date and venue years in advance, and since it’s always a one-game winner-take-all, it becomes the largest sporting event of the year whenever the World Cup isn’t around conquering the world.
The NFL ups the ante by making it start at 6:30 P.M. on a Sunday. Since football has none of the timing inconsistency and unpredictability of baseball, you know the game will finish by 10:00-10:30 P.M., and an even nicer 7:30 P.M. for the Pacific coast fans. Even if the game runs later and it’s time for the tykes to go to bed, they were exposed to at least three hours of entertainment ranging from the game to the halftime show to the commercials. The money has already been made. Current American culture allows for an event like the Super Bowl to thrive as well as it has. Current American culture can hardly muster baseball starting so late, and possibly running until midnight, no matter how good the games can be.
Side-Note Number Two: the far lengthier commercials during MLB playoffs definitely hurts the brand as well. I’d much rather they move to a soccer-like format where the game keeps moving and all the advertisements are done throughout the game. That way you can cut down time between innings and between pitching changes.
Major League Baseball this millennium has experienced a parity that no other league outside of maybe the NHL has mustered. The matchups are tighter, the games are closer, the momentum swings back and forth every year. We haven’t seen a back-to-back champ since the Yankees. We haven’t seen a rematch in baseball since 1999 when the Yankees and Braves played each other for the second time in three years. Look at the NBA: four straight seasons of the same teams, they pretty much know each other’s family tree at this point. The Golden State Warriors pretty much broke the NBA anyway.
This beautiful parity creates awesome unpredictable baseball, but that also means with no time limit we’re seeing more and more games running long. 2018 World Series gave us an 18-inning marathon, 2017 World Series gave us a Game 5 slugfest that lasted nearly 6 hours. The 2016 World Series featured a Game 7 for the ages---complete with extra innings AND a rain delay which forced at least 50 million people to wait until past midnight to see a winner.
We absolutely have to start these games earlier.
The World Series occurs in the fall, hence the Fall Classic, which means people are working, kids are going to school, college-goers are in the thick of their semester, and the wheels of America are turning and trying to make their money so they can do their Christmas shopping and vacation plans. 8:00 is too darn late, period. No other championship occurs during this season, let alone this late. In the late Fall we have the MLS Cup, but they smartly choose to do their final matchup in the late afternoon.
My proposal is simple: 6:30 P.M. on weeknights, and on the weekends at 4:00 P.M. With the proper marketing, the ratings will not suffer (they honestly would be even better) and it will give a chance for everyone to see a game in its entirety. 40 million plus tuned in to the 2017-2018 AFC Championship Game between the Jaguars and the Patriots, and that game started at 3:00 in the afternoon, supposedly a time period that isn’t good for tv ratings. Baloney.
Baseball is a sport meant to be played in the daytime, with the sun gleaming and providing all the lighting necessary to display baseball’s best. There’s a special nostalgia to afternoon baseball that can be duplicated with the World Series. Not saying all the games should be in the afternoon, but starting every series on the weekend in an afternoon would be such a nice change of pace. To me, Game 1 should always start somewhere between 3:00 and 4:00 P.M. on a Saturday. Your only competition would be college football (your team is not Alabama or Ohio State, it’s pointless anyway) and reruns, no big deal. And then if you pull it off properly, a potential Game 7 would also be played in the thick of a breezy fall Sunday afternoon. Come, on, who, WHO wouldn’t want that?
My Proposed Schedule:
Game 1: Saturday 4:00 P.M.
Game 2: Sunday 3:30 P.M.
Game 3: Tuesday 6:15 P.M.
Game 4: Wednesday 6:15 P.M.
(Whenever Necessary)
Game 5: Thursday 6:15 P.M.
Game 6: Saturday 4:00 P.M.
Game 7: Sunday 3:00 P.M.
There you have it, only three games that might run into the later evening, and even then if it’s a four hour marathon you’ll still be able to see the entire game before 11:00 P.M. hits. There’s a good chance not a single game in the 2018 World Series finished before 11:00, and we just can’t have this anymore. I love my baseball, honestly I do, but I also value my sleep and I also have to muster enough energy to work the next day. Super Bowl Hangover is a real thing, now imagine duplicating that nauseating sensation multiple times because the ballgames with 14 pitchers used refuses to finish until past midnight. This is a problem with a simple solution, television surveys and ratings be absolutely damned.
Side Note: I get it, they also want 8:00 P.M. so the West Coast can watch, but with MLB becoming a regional sports league, odds are if one of their teams isn't in the Series, unless they are a diehard baseball fan they probably wouldn't be watching the game anyway. And with the modern world of streaming through laptops, computers, and smartphones, there are many more ways to watch the game regardless of where you are---whether it be work, school, running errands, etc. And on an economic standpoint I'd rather take 3/4ths of the United States having a good viewing timeslot as opposed to risking a game running through midnight and losing fans at a rapid pace because it started at 8:00. Sorry West Coast, but you'll still have two potential weekends to see the Series.
40 million saw the Pats squeak by the Jaguars on a Sunday afternoon. 100 million plus tune in yearly to the Super Bowl which starts two hours before the “primetime” hours. Lastly, the biggest event in the sports universe, the World Cup, is always played in the afternoon, and draws at least a billion plus. We have to shake off the old adage about primetime and sporting events having to fall in these time slots. It is damaging what has been a decade of excellent postseason baseball, and is damaging its chances of drawing the next generation of fans.
With so much going in favor of baseball in terms of personality and appeal, adjusting the timeslots of the postseason, especially the World Series, is absolutely vital if you are trying to maintain successful in the competitive world of sports entertainment. This is a no-brainer, kill the late-night tradition and revert back to the past with good ol’ fashioned Afternoon World Series baseball.