There are various times where the process of accessing baseball information and following the teams and games you want has changed, mostly for the better in my lifetime.
ESPN was part of that process in 1990 when it gained televised rights for Major League Baseball. Remember that there was a time, through about 1997 when ESPN would intentionally carry every team in the league on its airwaves at least once or twice during the season. No matter where you lived, if you watched ESPN baseball, you would see the teams that were not performing well at least once or twice each season, the Royals, Athletics, Expos, Pirates and Twins among them.
As baseball became more available through a variety of sources, thanks in part to the internet, ESPN changed and only showed the popular teams, normally the big six, Cubs, Giants, Yankees, Red sox, Mets and Phillies with some Braves and Angels mixed in. but over time, with developments in mobile technology and social media, you could follow baseball exactly as you wanted it.
By 2021, if you were willing to pay up, you could watch any team online or listen to them via a variety of streaming platforms, get updates from fans and reporters on Twitter and other social platforms and feel like you were right there with all the fans.
But one experience has become worse in recent years. Streaming for obvious reasons has delays and most studies have shown that those delays are 15-20 seconds at a minimum. Since I’m a blind fan and I prefer the audio route, those delays were reasonable. You heard the result of the play via the online stream which I always obtained via the MLB provided streaming audio service through its website and app by the time sothers had a chance to post about it online or the update came through from MLB or ESPN about the play.
No longer is this true. IN 2022, Audacy took over the MLB service provided to fans from the league. The service quality has gone way, way down in numerous ways. The worst of them, significant audio delays. The Audacy audio feed is always 65 to 80 seconds behind the same audio streamed via the MLBTV overlay of the same audio broadcast. So this is not an issue with the feed itself, it is an issue with how Audacy processes the feed. Worse, Audacy inserts local advertising during the every break and sometimes, the system brings you back several seconds later than the standard broadcast came back, creating even more of a delay. Sometimes, the commercial spots keep playing and you are not returned to live action until the inning is all but over. So if you are a fan like me who likes keeping up with what is going on in baseball when I’m in a baseball following mood, that means either don’t follow a thing online and turn off all updates so the broadcast isn’t spoiled because it is so behind, don’t listen to a damn game at all unless you can get it on your local radio station, hent many large towns have no MLB affiliates anymore, or just enjoy the game being spoiled play, after play, after play. I have not even mentioned the other major issue with the Audacy provided service, with audio skipping back 20-40 seconds at times and repeating what I just heard, or skipping ahead a few seconds at random and missing a play all together.
For those who wondered about other services, TuneIn is even further behind the Audacy provided feed, the same is true for Sirius-XM which I recently added to my phone since my wife has the subscription, it will serve as the replacement for all other sports audio programs. With the other sports, I never have had any regular in game updates and I don’t even get an alert about the final score of the game, so its not an issue if I listen to an NBA, NHL or NFL game, though I’d still have to stay off social media as with Sirius-XM, I’m nearly two full minutes behind the action. But when it comes to baseball, I’m going to have to just give up something I guess, because the listening experience has been forever ruined.
This could be resolved of course, MLB could go back to operating the service the way it once did, taking the feed directly from the teams and giving you a service that was 15 or 20 seconds behind live radio, not a service that is more than a minute behind the streamed MLBTV feed and nearly 90 seconds behind live radio. A friendly hent for those at MLB, the local advertising inserted by Audacy, well it’s not providing the benefit you thought it would. Here in Austin where I live, having listened to more than six hours of streamed baseball on the MLB app this weekend, I heard numerous spots for the same five companies and organizations, Repipe.com, TheSource.org, a promotion for the local Salvation Army, a promotion from Austin Public Health about Mental health awareness and a store that sells lots of alcoholic spirits called Specs. A few times I’d hear an advertisement for a local car dealer an a couple times there were spots for major national chains like Lowe’s, but those were few and far between.
The approach Sirius takes, while the delays are even worse than MLB is to insert promotions about its offerings during local network breaks, the rest of the time it takes the network feed. Sirius-XM rather than taking the feed from the radio station such as the Giants KNBR is taking the feed from the Giants satellite distribution that radio affiliates use.
So the experience of enjoying baseball on the internet has taken a huge step back. It is better than no baseball, but the quality of the offering has struck out. Since the MLB service has become so difficult to use, I have for now canceled my subscription that would have renewed in 2024, I’ll take the even longer delayed Sirius-XM app feed if it’s a feed that at least works and I guess I’ll just turn off all of the notifications and avoid any social media during live baseball.
Blind Baseball Perspective 