The Resolution Will Not Be Televised

If you haven’t heard yet, or seen, or read, or cared – you might be one of the 40% of San Diego citizens who can’t watch a Padres game on TV.

Boo hoo.

Actually I don’t know why I got so sarcastic about that. It does suck. It sucks a lot. It sucks like your Mom’s old Hoover that didn’t quite get up all the crud, so weeks later you’d still be able to find whole pieces of Cap’n Crunch stuck in the carpet. It sucks like that. There are a lot of reasons you can’t watch the games and there are even more people and groups you can blame for it, which actually makes it more fun! You can blame John Moores and Jeff Moorad and Jerry Sanders and Will Venable (let’s face it, he’s not helping any), and you get to blame Dish Network and AT&T and the rest of the money-grubbers who have yet to close their respective deals.

I have chosen in my infinite wisdom to mainly blame FOX Sports SD and John Moores.

I choose FOX Sports SD because what is the freaking hold up? Honestly. Maybe if you spent a little less time flaunting almost attractive FOX Sports Girls who just got off the overnight shift at Déjà vu, and started focusing on completing some TV deals so that the other 40% could see your parade of bedazzled faux-hotties, everyone would be a little happier. I don’t get the mentality. I really don’t. I’ve tried to avoid ever mentioning this in anything I’ve ever written, but it seems appropriate for this situation: I work in television. I know how things are supposed to operate and why shows get cancelled and renewed and people get fired and hired. Everything revolves around one major revenue source: Advertising. Commercials, sponsors, well-placed billboards even down to the suit jackets Dick Enberg wears. All of these things matter and all of these things bring in money for everyone involved. If no one is watching your show that means no one is watching the commercials and no one is hearing the cleverly placed Dr. Pepper reference Jim Parsons just made and no one is making any money. Show cancelled. The same goes for sports. All sports. Why do you think they ride that Coors Light train into every NFL game possible? Cause 25 million people just saw that train and perhaps 4 million of them would decide to buy Coors Light and that is a solid profit for the frost brewed Rockies. So, why on Earth is FOX Sports SD content with selling advertisers to half the city?! It makes no sense! Every week that goes by they are literally losing at least $500,000 in advertising revenue. Unless FOX Sports SD is the first broadcasting group in the history of broadcasting to be in this industry ‘for the love of it’, someone needs to be fired. You can have your stand off with the cable providers for only so long, until someone gives up and everyone loses. Hell, it sounds like I want them to succeed! And, I do! I think the FOX Sports broadcast is a good one, and they provide a solid product – to half the city!

Every week that they squabble over millions they lose hundreds of thousands. It’s a terrible way to run a business and probably why no one wants to work with them.

I blame John Moores because he doesn’t give a crap! I know people have argued that he can’t do much to help one way or the other, but that’s a bunch of bull. You don’t think the one singular guy in San Diego who made the most money off this deal could possibly have any sway on the situation? You’re wrong. He could get active. In fact he should! It might leave the people of this city with one good thing to say about the lame-duck owner. He could call on the Mayor, or City Council. He could get his rich buddies together and offer to advertise and support the TV deal if they promise to complete said deal within two weeks, or some other arbitrary date. They’d sign the dotted line faster than you could say “Life’s Better With Baseball!” But John Moores, who made more money off this deal than my entire family has made in the history of the world, has done nothing. He doesn’t really care and really he never has. He’s getting out of this business now much richer and free of the responsibility he has to supply a winner.

He could provide some persuasion, but he’s happier creating an exit.

In a recent post on the Union-Tribune website (Do they still have hard copy newspapers?) newly acquired writer and native New Englander, Matthew T. Hall, gave his list of people to blame for the TV debacle. The one group on Hall’s blame list that drew some ire from the readers was ‘The Fans’. People were mad, but Hall was right. We are part of the problem. As I’ve written several times on ChickenFriars and on The Kept Faith: our continued support destroys our chances of ever being relevant. We blindly follow the Padres; we take what they give us and root for the squad anyway. While I am excited with a lot of the new talent on the team, I also decided I wouldn’t pay for one game this year. I’m not going to funnel money into a machine that’s more broken down than my 2003 Ranger. If we actually showed some solidarity and spoke up against what this organization and its affiliates are forcing us to live with then perhaps we might just be heard. Hall called for a protest this Sunday at PETCO Park. A protest to show that the fans are sick and have had enough. Like Howard Beale raising his arms in the air and screaming for sanity, Hall would ask us to stick our heads out the window, aim them down the first base line and yell, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore!”

Sure, Hall’s move is a bit of a gimmick to give the writer a little notoriety in his new city that’s still mourning the loss of Tim Sullivan. However, his ambition and desire for a unified front is not a crazy idea, or something that can’t be realized before it’s too late and we’re back to the days of one game a week on KUSI. His call to the pen isn’t for the flame-throwing lefty to jog in and close it out. It’s for something just a tad simpler. He wants the ‘Ol crafty veteran with a little gas left in the tank to come in and keep us in the game.

Join him. Do it. Come out of the bullpen and show this organization that we still have pride. We still remember what 1984 and 1998 felt like. We still remember watching Tony hit another single through the hole or Goose mowing down the heart of the order. This is still your town and dammit it’s your stadium. Show yourselves and let them see your collective disapproval. Just don’t make the mistake of staying home, because one thing is for sure: This revolution will not be televised.

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