The Baseball Network

The Baseball Network was an ill-fated arrangement between Major League Baseball, ABC, and NBC that ran in 1994 and 1995. It was conceived after CBS refused to renew their contract with the MLB in 1993.

Why It Struck Out

 * 1) All postseason games took place at night.
 * 2) If there were multiple playoff games on the same night, the coverage was regional.
 * 3) For Baseball Night in America, in markets with only one team like Boston, if the Red Sox had a game on the West Coast in the regular season, people couldn't see the game it would start too late at 8 p.m. Pacific time for Boston on either ABC or NBC so viewers in Boston only had the option of viewing the earliest game of the night and vice versa for markets in the West Coast where one of the teams was on the East Coast.
 * 4) In markets with two MLB teams during Baseball Night in America like New York for example, if viewers could see the Mets game, then they couldn't see the Yankees game and vice versa. This also happened to Chicago (with the Cubs and the White Sox), Los Angeles (with the Dodgers and the Angels), and the San Francisco Bay Area (with the Giants and the A's)
 * 5) During the 1995 Division Series, the fan frustration with The Baseball Network was so bad that the mere mention of it during the Mariners–Yankees ALDS from public address announcer Tom Hutyler at Seattle's Kingdome brought boos from most of the crowd.
 * 6) Thanks to the Baseball Network, the 1995 postseason, considered one of the greatest playoff tournaments in baseball, happened in relative secrecy.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The concept (which has the league produce the telecast themselves and brokering it between the networks) was admittedly novel, but was executed completely poorly.
 * 2) The theme music (composed by Scott Schreer) is actually pretty good.

Reception
The network received negative reception from fans and critics, and its failure partly paved the way for MLB's current arrangement with Fox beginning in 1996.