The impending death of Bally Sports

[Hongbit]

There’s a part of me that misses the days of 2 4 7 9 20 50 56 62 

Edited February 20, 2023 by Hongbit

[CMRivdogs]

19 minutes ago, oblong said:

when we were driving home from our yearly trips to TN, we always picked up WJR just south of Lexington.  That's when the mountains started to give way.  This was only during the night though.  When I started driving I would like to leave around 3 pm, but before that the "old people" left in the morning.

 

Old people stopped around 3 PM. When I was young and we made trips to Pa, we'd leave in the evening after work. My folks had a Rambler station wagon. Put the mattress from the sleeper sofa in the back. We'd fall asleep, my dad could drive in peace...

The mattress helped on the trip back because that danged car would tend to break down south of the Mason Dixon Line.

[oblong]

44 minutes ago, Hongbit said:

There’s a part of me that misses the days of 2 4 7 9 20 50 56 62 

I do too.   We've evolved to an on demand culture in how we consume our media.  We don't just accept what they put in front of us.  I think that's changed our brains a little bit.  Even the earlier days of cable, up until 2000 or so.  You didn't have 300 channels, but maybe 30 or 40.  Just randomly hitting the "Channel up "button until you saw something you liked.  Now we seek out specifically what we are looking for.  We don't pick out a movie on Saturday to go see at the theater and hope we like it. I miss sitting down with my family as a kid and watching CBS on Friday nights, or being in high school and watching NBC on Thursday nights while I did homework.  

Now I have more available but spend 30 minutes looking for something, then end up watching The Office or whatever. It's hard to commit even 30 minutes sometimes where as in the past I feel like we didn't have so many distractions so we would.

 

 

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Hongbit said:

There’s a part of me that misses the days of 2 4 7 9 20 50 56 62 

What's this 20 50 and 62 stuff?

Young whippershnappers!

 

I have to laugh also - because my dad, who was a big electronic gadget guy, was still too cheap to ever spend much on a television, so my formative memories are 2,4,7,9 on an already ancient B&W RCA with a turner whose knob you had to jiggle all the time to hold a signal,  and 56 at school - where we had some rooms wired to a central UHF antenna/RFamp system. 

Of course since you can find anything on the net - this would be about the exact model!

Edited February 20, 2023 by gehringer_2

[CMRivdogs]

We had an early version of the cable box that if you turned it just right and used a match book cover) you could get some pay channels like HBO and The Playboy Channel.

[Shinzaki]

When we first got cable in my part of Wood county in NW Ohio..it was on a small system locally owned in Waterville.  The people running it would do some interesting things like running PPV fights on one of the unused channels deep on the box, or running multiple feeds of stations like USA when they had MLB so you could see a lot of out of market games.

Then we had lightning strike the system and it blew up our TV's, so we got rid of it.

 

[RatkoVarda]

WJR was awesome; brother and sister went to school in Boston and they could regularly tune into Ernie in late 80s and early 90s - but only for night games; too much something during the day

[oblong]

In the mid 90s I would get a new box but only have the coax in when watching.  I got all the movie channels until they sent a refresh signal while I had it plugged in.  Would last at least 6 months.  

[Hongbit]

Timely that this just popped up in the feed. 

[Jim Cowan]

3 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

We had an early version of the cable box that if you turned it just right and used a match book cover) you could get some pay channels like HBO and The Playboy Channel.

You could do that in a hotel room with the foil from a cigarette pack!

[Screwball]

Question; I've read this entire thread, and I,m still confused. Probably because I don't live around Detroit.  If I want to watch the Tigers next year - how do I go about doing it? I live in Ohio so I don't have local Detroit stuff. Best I can tell from reading here, it will depend of the RSN, which I think means "regional sports network."

I get Fox Sports Detroit via Direct TV, which I am going to cancel.  Am I screwed?

[Toddwert]

58 minutes ago, Screwball said:

Question; I've read this entire thread, and I,m still confused. Probably because I don't live around Detroit.  If I want to watch the Tigers next year - how do I go about doing it? I live in Ohio so I don't have local Detroit stuff. Best I can tell from reading here, it will depend of the RSN, which I think means "regional sports network."

I get Fox Sports Detroit via Direct TV, which I am going to cancel.  Am I screwed?

I dont think anything as changed as of now.... bally sports  for now

[oblong]

2 hours ago, Screwball said:

Question; I've read this entire thread, and I,m still confused. Probably because I don't live around Detroit.  If I want to watch the Tigers next year - how do I go about doing it? I live in Ohio so I don't have local Detroit stuff. Best I can tell from reading here, it will depend of the RSN, which I think means "regional sports network."

I get Fox Sports Detroit via Direct TV, which I am going to cancel.  Am I screwed?

Depends on whether you are in the blackout area. If you are then yes you are screwed if you cancel. If you are not then you could get mlb.tv and watch.  Could also pay for the Bally app I think. That’s like $20 a month. 

[Screwball]

Thanks, that helps.  Everything is so complicated. One would think it should be ala-carte, but it's not. I've had Direct TV since the 90s, with no issues, but just too expensive anymore for what I use. Plus, Cornhole has upped their game on bandwidth, so I have enough speed to use streaming. Direct TV no longer provides what I want (NFL Sunday Ticket for example).

I knew when I tried to cancel I would get a sales pitch on why I shouldn't. It was truly brutal. This guy should get a raise and an Oscar. Lives in Kentucky, and a baseball fan to boot. I just want to send back the box, but it took an hour.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Screwball

[Sports_Freak]

10 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

What's this 20 50 and 62 stuff?

Young whippershnappers!

 

I have to laugh also - because my dad, who was a big electronic gadget guy, was still too cheap to ever spend much on a television, so my formative memories are 2,4,7,9 on an already ancient B&W RCA with a turner whose knob you had to jiggle all the time to hold a signal,  and 56 at school - where we had some rooms wired to a central UHF antenna/RFamp system. 

Of course since you can find anything on the net - this would be about the exact model!

We had an RCA. All the older sets were pieces of furniture.

 

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Sports_Freak said:

All the older sets were pieces of furniture.

yeah. A cabinet maker today would kill to have access to all the mahogany burl that went into 40's and 50' console radios and televisions.

[casimir]

9 hours ago, Screwball said:

Thanks, that helps.  Everything is so complicated. One would think it should be ala-carte, but it's not. I've had Direct TV since the 90s, with no issues, but just too expensive anymore for what I use. Plus, Cornhole has upped their game on bandwidth, so I have enough speed to use streaming. Direct TV no longer provides what I want (NFL Sunday Ticket for example).

I knew when I tried to cancel I would get a sales pitch on why I shouldn't. It was truly brutal. This guy should get a raise and an Oscar. Lives in Kentucky, and a baseball fan to boot. I just want to send back the box, but it took an hour.

One would think trying to watch a ball game on TV would be easy given the current technology if one has the cash for it.

[casimir]

On 2/18/2023 at 3:12 PM, oblong said:

They raised the price of at bat $10. Last couple of seasons I got it free for being a ticket holder.  I love the convenience of not need to find a radio to listen.  Mentally $30 is a big difference from $20 though. 

Yeah, I saw that price hike come through this past weekend.  I guess I still pay the $30 (not sure what my other radio options are), but it is a big step up.

[chasfh]

22 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

The 50 thousand watt blowtorches. Most all were on clear channels (no other station could use the frequency or with a few the frequency was shared by daytimers that went off the air at sunset). I basically grew up listening to KDKA until we moved south. Could still catch them at night if conditions were good. I remember sitting in my car with the GM of the Pirates single A team in Salem,VA listening to John Candelaria's first big league game. Candy had spent part the year before in Salem.

KDKA, WBZ, WCFL were my primary late night go tos...

KDKA. That was another reliable one. Pirates!

Some of the others that were at least fairly reliable pulls were WSM, WLW, WHAS, WLW (Nawlins!), WCBS, KYW, KMOX, and WCAU. The higher up the dial you got the harder they were to pull in, and I don’t think I got anything above 1210 from very far away very often.

[chasfh]

22 hours ago, Hongbit said:

There’s a part of me that misses the days of 2 4 7 9 20 50 56 62 

I remember trying to get channel 78 out of Windsor to see French language TV, hoping to see an occasional Expos game. The station was only maybe 15 or so miles away but it might as well have been 150 for how hard it was to get anything. Even after they moved it to channel 54, it was still almost impossible to pull in.

[CMRivdogs]

T Mobile had a deal last year with MLB.COM on games. Trying to remember, but I think it was free. It did have the usual black out restrictions so if you're in the the Tiger's blackout area you're still out of luck.

[oblong]

I could easily pick up a station out of Chicago, (1000 AM?) in the 90's and sometimes if it were a clear night a station out of St. Louis.  KMOX?

 

[Edman85]

1 hour ago, casimir said:

One would think trying to watch a ball game on TV would be easy given the current technology if one has the cash for it.

How ironic is it that it is easier to watch a game out-of-market than in? I'm good for everything except Rays/Marlins.

[casimir]

25 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

How ironic is it that it is easier to watch a game out-of-market than in? I'm good for everything except Rays/Marlins.

That's exactly the point.

[lordstanley]

Not that the Tigers would care, we're not talking a lot of people, but I'm sure the TIgers-Jays and Leafs-Wings split in my hometown of Sarnia is much more skewed towards the Toronto teams these days than when I was growing up.  My childhood house was 60 miles from Michigan & Trumbull. Border crossing was a piece of cake, asked for a driver's license at most and never a line more than 10 minutes. WJR came booming in day or night. A few dozen games on TV - WDIV or Channel 50 or Channel 20 - plus national games was enough to tide us over. Remaining a Detroit sports fan these days is simper than ever, even out here in Vancouver, thanks to radio apps and season pay telecast options. But becoming a Detroit sports fan in Vancouver? Requires an investment most won't make.