Bud Selig just doesn’t get it. Or he gets it but thinks we’re so stupid that we’ll just accept whatever he says. At a panel discussion sponsored by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Selig defended the DirecTV deal.
I agonized over” the decision to go with DirecTV, Selig said. “Obviously our objective is to get our product in front of as many people as possible. … But the number of people who can’t get DirecTV is very, very small.
Yes, only about 5,000 current subscribers will not have access to DirecTV, but of the 230,000 cable customers, how many will want to toss out their entire setup which might include cable specific DVR equipment and install a dish on their roofs just to follow their favorite team?
Now we firmly believe in capitalism and free enterprise but let’s call a spade a spade. This is a move driven solely by dollars and cents. The fact that Bud Selig is trying to sell it like he “agonized” over whether to take the money and run is a slap in the face to all smart consumers. We would respect Bud more if he just said, “DirecTV offered us a deal we couldn’t refuse. We hope the great fans will switch to DirecTV but for those who cannot do so, we still have MLBTV on the internet.”
At the same panel, NBA commish David Stern said that having Congress look into the deal between MLB and DirecTV was ridiculous.
As a taxpayer, I think the most important thing the Senate should be doing is holding hearings on Bud’s DirecTV package. I don’t care about health care or … the war in Iraq.
We have to agree with David Stern (aka The Biggest Badass Commish in History) here. It’s not as much of a time waster as renaming french fries to “freedom fries” but they really should have more things to do. How is it that Stern can step into a PR fiasco for Bud Selig and sound smart?
Links:
[AZ Central]: Selig defends DirecTV deal, gets support from NBA’s Stern
