-EG> But you labor under a false assumption, the Internet ISN'T
-EG> taking away fans from the local market, it's ADDING them.
-EG> I'm NOT a fan of the Cardinals or the Rangers (I've been a
-EG> fan of the Braves and A's for many decades) and I could
-EG> give a rat's butt about either St. Louis or Texas. With the
-EG> Internet, I can keep tabs on both; without the Internet, I
-EG> DON'T turn on the Cardinals or the Rangers and I imagine, a
-EG> lot of other fans don't turn on the local teams for the
-EG> very same reasons.
Of course, if the local team was stinkeroo, then fans might
be attracted to watching or listening to teams from out-of-
market.  But this is pretty much hokum.  We heard for years-
 
1) If sold-out NFL games were televised locally, it would
hurt attendance in the long run.
 
This theory has since been proven to be false.  If a team
is sold out, it is because there is great interest in that
team, and televising sold-out games increases that interest.
Obviously it isn't necessarily true of a team that DOESN'T
sell out.
 
2) College football would be harmed if teams were allowed
more than 2, or 3 appearances on TV over a period of two
years.
 
Also untrue, although it may have cut into attendance at
Saturday afternoon high school games or small-college
games.  But not too many.
 
The problem, however, with Atlanta (and the Dodgers, and
the Red Sox, and the Yankees, and the Cubs) being on
superstations is that people in "neutral" areas wind
up watching those teams, perhaps building loyalties
up where the MLB establishment might not want them.
After all, the Braves were advertising themselves as
"America's Team", weren't they?
 
One of the screwball things that happened when the Red
Sox took their games off of WSBK and moved them to weak
signalled (and the very weak programming lineup) of 
WABU, channel 68.  The station is carried on so few
cable systems in New England that the Sox had to give 
away a cable feed to several area systems in western
Massachusetts - in other words, the fans in places like
Pittsfield get the live satellite feed on cable for free.
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