Can Major League Baseballs Network Score?
Professional sports leagues have prospered from the media for a long time, collecting buckets of revenue from broadcast, cable, satellite, and lately Internet companies for rights to show their games. But when it comes to getting into the business directly by launching their own TV channels, their record has been anything but stellar. Major League Baseball, the last of the big four leagues to create its own network, hopes to show the others how it should be done. MLB has an obvious advantage since it can learn from its forerunners’ mistakes. At the same time, though, the league faces a huge challenge by being the laggard: The Web is siphoning viewers and ad dollars away from television like never before. If the chief of the MLB Network is worried, he doesn’t show it. “I look at this like I am an entrepreneur starting a business,” says Tony Petitti, the former No. 2 executive at CBS Sports recruited to set up and run the new channel, which is slated to appear in January. “It comes down
