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MLB's exclusive deal with DirecTV: Just the latest "screw you" to the game's best fans. Plus: A Pro Bowl item!

You’ve heard by now of the nearly done deal in which Major League Baseball will sell its Extra Innings package exclusively to DirecTV’s 15 million subscribers for $700 million over seven years.

The package, which allows fans anywhere to watch up to 60 out-of-town game broadcasts a week, has been available for five years on DirecTV, on the Dish Network and on cable systems. About 75 million customers had access to it.

This must be a big deal because politicians are grandstanding about it.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has written a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking for an investigation. Sen Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who has been a critic of the NFL’s similar exclusive deal with DirecTV, told the New York Times, “I’ve asked my antitrust people to do research to confirm my preliminary judgment that it’s an antitrust violation. But I don’t think I’ll be able to stop it.”

Yes, it’s very difficult to stop Major League Baseball from doing what it wants to do on antitrust grounds because MLB is exempt from antitrust laws, thanks to a 1922 Supreme Court decision that, nonsensically, declared baseball isn’t interstate commerce. Congress has chosen to do nothing about that ruling in the 85 years since except a 1998 act limiting the antitrust exemption in labor matters.

Extra Innings customers who can’t or don’t want to sign up for DirecTV are squawking, though as the hardest of hardcore fans, people willing to pay $179 a year for the right to watch a dozen or so baseball games every day, they should know this is pretty standard behavior for baseball.

That is:

Dear best customers,
Screw you.
Love,
MLB
That’s because baseball, like most sports entities, knows it’s not going to lose its best fans. There’s almost nothing baseball can throw at its most dedicated customers that will make them go away. A decade of Fox being the national broadcast TV network is all the evidence we need to back up that assertion.
As Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus wrote last month in an insightful piece reluctantly defending the deal, “You simply don’t go from being such a big fan of baseball that you would purchase 1,200 games a year on satellite to a non-fan based on one decision.”
What MLB will get out of the deal will be $30 million a year over the reported bid of the cable pay-per-view service inDemand, plus a dedicated MLB channel on the basic tier beginning in 2009. There are 30 teams, so the gain would be $1 million per year per team, or about the salary of a utility infielder.
Baseball and DirecTV have both been mum.
As Sheehan points out, though, the deal would have hidden benefits for baseball. Extra Innings customers who don’t have a view of the southern sky, a requirement for satellite, or simply don’t want to switch to DirecTV, would be driven to the home team’s local TV coverage for their baseball fix. Many teams at least partially own or are owned by their broadcast outlets, so higher ratings directly benefit the clubs.
Those who want out-of-town games would be driven to MLB.tv, baseball’s online source for streaming games. MLB wouldn’t have to share the $79.95 per season it collects for that service, as it has to share the subscription fee with whoever carries Extra Innings.
Now, I hear you asking, who wants to watch baseball on a computer instead of a TV? The answer, courtesy of MLB: Screw you. You’ll take what we give you.
I don’t know enough about the intricacies of broadcast deals to know if MLB comes out ahead financially on this deal. My bet would be that in the short term, it does. MLB is all about the short term.
MLB isn’t run by idiots. It’s run by people who, if their grandmothers were drowning and you offered them a quarter now or a rope now and a dollar next year, would take the quarter. MLB is good at doing what makes money today, tomorrow be damned.
I do know enough about business to know that it’s usually not a good idea to piss off the customer base, particularly the best, most dedicated customers, though baseball has been testing this hypothesis for years now. It’s generally not wise to tell a huge chunk of your best customers, “Go away.”
Major League Baseball plays its most important games late at night, after huge numbers of kids in the Eastern and Central time zones are in bed. It has mostly priced families of modest or even middle-class means out of stadiums. It has sold its national broadcast rights to a network that does a fine job on football, but is actively hostile to baseball and produces broadcasts that incense fans.
And now it’s planning on restricting access to the product, or forcing many customers — many of the most dedicated customers — into using less-than-satisfactory methods if they want to maintain access.
Major League Baseball has been setting attendance and revenue records lately, but one lesson in sports is that just because something’s happening today doesn’t mean it’s always going to be happening. If you don’t believe me, ask your parents about the time when the Kansas City Royals, Baltimore Orioles, Pittsburgh Pirates and Cincinnati Reds were consistent powerhouses. Ask them how the Atlanta Braves were doing in those days.
MLB has had the same mantra for a good decade now: “Screw the best fans, screw the future, go for whatever maximizes revenue today.” The game caught me early. I’m stuck for life. My kids are 4 and 1. I can’t imagine them becoming baseball fans, even sharing a house with me. The hurdles to entry are just too high. The dare is not seductive enough to take.
Full disclosure: I’m a DirecTV customer with a clear view of the southern sky. I subscribe to Extra Innings, with Salon reimbursing me for the fee as a business expense. I’m unaffected by the proposed deal.
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The NFL’s war on drugs [PERMALINK]
The NFL is likely to institute a rule that would ban players who tested positive for steroids from receiving postseason awards that year, including a spot in the Pro Bowl, according to news reports.
Players are reported to be behind the idea, though union chief Gene Upshaw has raised concerns with commissioner Roger Goodell about the proposed rule’s effect on incentive clauses in player contracts.
The rule will probably be known casually as the Merriman rule, after San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawn Merriman, who is at the Pro Bowl this week despite having served a four-game suspension this season for a positive test. Merriman maintains his innocence, but also told reporters he supports the proposed rule.
I’m a little worried here. Is there any evidence that a rule banning players from the Pro Bowl for drug use wouldn’t encourage drug use?
I know a rule banning fans from watching the Pro Bowl if we’re caught with drugs would send us all racing down to the old dope peddler, but we don’t get a free trip to Hawaii. Think a free trip to Hawaii would be the only thing to stand in the way of your using if you were making NFL money?
If the NFL really wanted to knock out steroids, it would force those who test positive to play every down of every exhibition game the following season. You’d get a clean league then, boy.
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On vacation [PERMALINK]
And speaking of free trips to Hawaii, this column will be on vacation next week. I just mention the free trip to Hawaii in case someone is feeling generous. Remember: This column is for sale.
We’ll talk again on Tuesday, Feb. 20, after Presidents Day. In the meantime, here’s this column’s archive, and, in case reading the 1,005 stories therein doesn’t take you the whole week, here’s Salon’s archive of stories about Claire Danes.
Previous column: Sports leagues shouldn’t accept intolerance
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U.S., China need a green peace, not a trade war

As Obama meets Xi, the U.S. is investigating China’s practices in the solar and wind sectors

By Joanna Lewis

Solar panels in the city of Baoding in China. (Credit: Reuters/David Gray)

Topics:Alternative Energy, China

Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States comes at a contradictory time in clean energy relations between the two countries. On the one hand, significant progress has been made under the clean energy cooperation agreements signed by Presidents Hu Jintao and Barak Obama in the fall of 2009. On the other hand, the two countries may be on the verge of a clean energy trade war. As a result, the positions that Xi and Obama take on these issues over the next week may well set the tone for that relationship’s future for better or worse.

China and the United States have launched numerous energy cooperation initiatives during the past 30 years. Only over the past decade, however, have they become global leaders in the relevant technologies, both as users and manufacturers. China now leads the world in wind power deployment, followed by the United States. Chinese investments in clean energy exceeded those of any other country in both 2009 and 2010, but the U.S. was back to number one in 2011 (where it had been for several years prior to 2009).

The seven new bilateral clean energy initiatives launched in 2009 focused on key areas, including renewable energy, advanced coal technology, energy efficiency and electric vehicles. The US-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC) (a virtual center which sponsors work in several locations in both countries) in particular has established a new model for cooperative clean energy research, development and demonstration that spans the public and private sectors and involves top researchers from universities and national laboratories in both countries. These programs have propelled numerous other collaborations, some of which—if the two sides decide to emphasize clean energy cooperation over competition—may be included in major announcements during Xi’s visit.

However, at the end of last year the United States initiated antidumping and countervailing duty investigations into China’s practices in the solar and wind sectors, and the Department of Commerce will decide soon whether to impose duties on Chinese solar panels and wind turbine components. Meantime, election year politics and a slow economic recovery are fueling competitive tensions.

President Obama announced in his State of the Union address last month that he would establish a new trade enforcement unit to speed investigations of unfair trading practices by China. Beijing has (not surprisingly) responded with its own investigation into American clean energy support programs. This comes as the US renewable energy industry is increasingly divided over China’s role. For example, the “Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy” (a US solar industry association) has asked the “Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing” (another US solar industry association) to drop its petition which launched the solar panel investigation. A CASE report estimates that higher US import duties on Chinese solar panels will eliminate up to 60,000 American jobs and hurt US consumers even more than US producers.

We are entering a period in which the incentives for conflict may overpower the incentives for cooperation. China and the United States are the world’s two largest economies, and should be leaders in establishing and enforcing the rules of the global trading system. But as the largest producers and consumers of energy, as well as the largest greenhouse gas emitters, they also have a responsibility to develop domestic, clean and affordable sources of energy for themselves as well as for others.

Both nations recognize the vital importance of strengthening innovation systems to inspire economic competitiveness, and both are increasingly becoming the leaders of the clean energy industry. These technologies are global industries with global supply chains, however, and national technology providers increasingly are crossing borders for both innovation and production. Our leaders would be well served to focus on how the two nations can work together to develop crucial energy technologies for the future, rather than on how to create even more obstacles.

: Dr Joanna L. Lewis is an assistant professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Serivce, Georgetown University. Her focus is on science, technology and international affairs, especially issues related to renewable energy. More Joanna Lewis

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Santorum mangles the Founding Fathers

It's the GOP insurgent, not Obama, who is waging a war against religious freedom

By Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg and Nancy Isenberg

James Madison and Rick Santorum (Credit: Wikipedia/Reuters/Rick Wilking)

Topics:2012 Elections, Rick Santorum, Religion

Each time erstwhile presidential candidate Rick Santorum rears his righteous head, it is to exploit a social issue that is of no import in a national election. But he knows that the way to keep the cameras pointed at him one more day is to manufacture a new bit of hysteria.

Last Thursday, Joan Walsh reported on Santorum as he clamored to punish non-Catholics by limiting their access to contraceptives if their workplace was in the hands of the Catholic Church. She rightly pointed out that he “absolutely mangles” what the founders said about religion. Raising the specter of the atheistic French Revolution and its notorious use of the guillotine, the former Pennsylvania senator planted a seed in the minds of his hearers: A left-driven tyranny was where the anti-Christian Obama administration would be heading next.

The fear-monger tosses out familial metaphors with devilish glee. At once subverting patriarchy within the home and turning the federal government into Big Brother, the sitting president stands in moral opposition to all that is good. And only the moral policeman Rick can stop him.

“They are taking faith and crushing it,” Santorum howls at the political left. “When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights then what’s left is the French Revolution…. What’s left are no unalienable rights. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine.”

This is a combination of really bad history and undisciplined demagoguery. What we’d like to focus on is not the fractured logic of the demagogue so much as the perversion of history by the two-term senator. We consider it quite sad that a presidential candidate in 2012 should be resurrecting the same dirty campaign tactic that accompanied the charge that Thomas Jefferson, for five years U.S. minister to France, would, if elected president, shut down churches and burn bibles.

Start with the fact that in his superficial evocation of the 1790s, Santorum was referring not to the French so much as he was unconsciously reviving the propaganda used by New England Federalists against the “atheist” Thomas Jefferson, who championed freedom of conscience and refused to wear his religion on his sleeve. From 1793 on, conservative Yankees predicted that the social chaos of Paris would wash ashore in America. Indeed, conservative academics of our own time view the French Revolution as the first step toward the Russian Revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union–all of which fits neatly with the crack-brained Tea Party narrative in which President Obama is a sworn socialist and enemy of capitalism.

Mitt Romney is not beyond indulging in the same polemical game, associating Obama with European social programs. Yet Santorum does what the Mormon cannot, by playing the “Catholic card” in his effort to “other” the president. It is an especially bizarre move in historical relief, because the Federalist critics who most loudly warned of the French-tainted Jefferson were New England Calvinists who feared Catholics as much as they feared French anarchy.

Federalists termed the French Revolution a “contagion,” a violent, sickening, uncivilizing process. If Santorum sees the metaphorical blade of the guillotine hanging over the heads of the Catholic bishops, it is well worth noting that eighteenth-century conservatives were so carried away by their own outlandish predictions that their panicky congressional majority passed a series of repressive laws, the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which first targeted French émigrés and then U.S. citizens who needed to be silenced. The Sedition Act authorized the imprisonment of journalists and politicians who criticized the president. The main purpose of the legislation was, as James Madison observed, to shut down free and open political debate–to derail democracy. Cleverly drafted, the Sedition Act allowed the government to punish critics of the president, but not the vice president. Why the omission? Because in 1798, John Adams’s vice president was the unAmerican Thomas Jefferson.

It certainly seems that Rick Santorum reads the First Amendment just as the Federalist Congress of 1798 did. As we all know, though, the First Amendment was intended to uphold religious freedom, protect speech, and ensure liberty of conscience. Madison, who conceived the First Amendment, defended the last of these three principles as a deeply private, individual right shielding citizens from the coercive, invasive force of a church or state government.

It is Santorum, not President Obama, who is waging a war against religion. It is the fear-mongers who endanger religious freedom. Why should the Catholic Church impose its doctrines on employees who are not Catholic? Why should any who are not Catholic be deprived of access to a health insurance benefit solely because they are employed by a Catholic hospital or university? Why should the Church be permitted to impose its doctrines on an individual who not a member? The First Amendment does not grant any church the power to deprive individuals of rights.

Santorum is waging a war not only on religion but on all Americans who do not share his faith. The Catholic Church has every right to impart its doctrines; its members can accept or reject them. The majority of Catholic men and women have rejected the particular doctrine prohibiting the use of contraception. Employees possess the right to insurance and the right to adhere to their own religious beliefs.

As Madison argued in a 1788 letter to Jefferson, religious fanaticism was as serious a danger to religious liberty as excessive state authority. In his words, “rights of conscience” were undermined by “overbearing majorities” who were intent on advancing the interests of a particular “religious establishment.” In plain and simple terms, the founders meant to protect individuals against excessive encroachments by church as well as state.

We might all wish to heed Madison’s further warning: “It is a melancholy reflection that liberty should be equally exposed to danger whether the Government has too much or too little power.” Religious liberty required the protection of state authority, in creating a barrier around the individual and guarding against intrusions from religious institutions.

The fact remains that President Obama is no more a French Revolutionary Jacobin than Jefferson or Madison. It appears, in fact, that the president has a very clear understanding of religious liberty, appreciating the boundaries between church and state just as Madison intended. His promptly conceived compromise solution, respecting religion without restricting rights, fits the balanced, reasonable approach our founders prescribed when they fought, state by state, to eliminate state funding and sanctioning (i.e., disestablishment) of privileged sects.

If the last three years tell us anything, 2012 will not usher in a new Age of Reason. Fanaticism will continue to seize the news cycle. Rick Santorum has learned (perhaps from Donald Trump and birther mania) that the best way to grab the headlines is to ramp up the epithets, bark the loudest, and fantasize a history that never was.

: Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg are Professors of History at Louisiana State University and coauthors of "Madison and Jefferson." (Random House, 2010). More Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg
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Chris Christie’s gay marriage headache

What’s good for his 2016 dreams could complicate his ability to survive 2013

By Steve Kornacki

Chris Christie (Credit: AP/Mel Evans)

Topics:War Room

There are two elections on the horizon that Chris Christie has a particular interest in. The first is in New Jersey next year, when he’ll seek a second term as governor. The second is in 2016, when he’ll make a logical presidential candidate — if he wins reelection in ’13 and if the Republican nomination is open. (For now at least, let’s leave aside the idea that Christie might serve as his party’s vice presidential candidate this year.)

This makes the debate over gay marriage in the Garden State, where the Democratic-controlled Senate approved marriage equality legislation yesterday, a problem for him.

On the one hand, support for gay marriage among New Jersey voters is solid — 52 percent favored it and 42 percent opposed it in one recent poll, while another pegged the margin at 48-37. Among independents, support is even higher. And the trajectory seems clear: Just five years ago, those overall numbers were reversed when the topic was polled. Given how rare Republican victories in New Jersey are (Christie’s 2009 win marked just the fifth statewide triumph for the GOP in 37 years, and only the second that was won by more than a point), Christie has to be very careful as he approaches his reelection race. He doesn’t have much margin for error when it comes to alienating swing voters — one of the reasons he was so colorful and adamant in denying interest in the presidential race last year — and swing voters in New Jersey are generally fine with gay marriage.

But Republican voters nationally are not, and it will be a long time before they are (if they ever are). So if he wants to preserve his viability for ’16, Christie can not be known as the New Jersey governor who enacted same-sex marriage. But he also can’t position himself as a hardline, stop-at-nothing-to-derail-it opponent of it; to do so would reek of the cultural conservatism that has made most national Republicans unmarketable in New Jersey and endanger Christie’s reelection prospects. And if he gets the boot in ’13, it could sink whatever ’16 ambitions he has.

Christie’s workaround has been to oppose gay marriage while calling for a public referendum. This has elicited howls from gay marriage supporters, who argue that minority group rights should never be put to a vote, but it has aligned him with a clear majority of voters, who say they like the referendum idea. Of course, a referendum campaign would be long, messy, and divisive. And anyway, Democrats in the legislature have the votes to make sure one never takes place.

But yesterday’s state Senate vote offered another potential way out for Christie: a legislative override. 24 of the chamber’s 40 members — including two Republicans — voted for gay marriage, a surprise result and a significant increase from the last such vote in 2010. It would only take three more votes to reach the number needed to override Christie’s veto. In the Assembly, where the bill will now head, Democrats enjoy a 47-33 majority, with 54 votes needed to override a veto.

The Republican Party in New Jersey has its very conservative pockets, but the cultural moderation of Clifford Case, Tom Kean and Christie Whitman is still prevalent too. There probably are a handful of GOP senators and a scattering of Assembly members who are personally OK with gay marriage and who could survive politically if they voted for it. This presents a Machiavellian possibility for Christie: Wink at them, continue voicing his opposition, then throw up his hands as the legislature overrides him and takes the issue off the table. As Josh Benson of Capital New York theorizes:

That would be a slap in Christie’s face, for sure. But it’s not clear that it would hurt. After all, if Christie vetoes same-sex-marriage legislation and gets overridden, he’ll be able to tell conservatives one day, when he’s asking for their support, that at least he tried to keep the liberals in check.

The legislature has until the end of its current term to override Christie — meaning nearly two years. So don’t expect an override anytime soon. But if popular support keeps growing and Christie finds himself staring at a difficult reelection race in ’13, it might start to make sense.

: Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More Steve Kornacki

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Joan Walsh on NPR’s On Point

The Salon writer debates author Charles Murray about the supposed decline of the white working class

By Carmen Garcia

Charles Murray

Topics:2012 Elections

On NPR’s On Point this morning, Joan Walsh debated “libertarian lightning-rod” Charles Murray about his argument that values, income, and “religiosity” have irrevocably split America between elites and “everybody else.” Challenging Murray’s belief that “the sorting and separation of the classes is inevitable,” Salon’s editor-at-large pushes her interlocutor to swap his outdated thinking for a far more realistic, 21st-century take, one that takes into account the vastly more complicated forces behind class division.

Listen here.

: More Carmen Garcia

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Do we still need Black History Month?

Three great documentaries air, including "More Than A Month," where one filmmaker explores his conflicted feelings

By Roger Catlin

A still from "More Than a Month"

Topics:Television, TV, Documentaries

Black History Month is an idea that filmmaker Shukree Hassan Tilghman finds passé. In his documentary “More Than a Month,” which premieres Thursday on PBS’ “Independent Lens,” he walks around with a signboard that says END BLACK HISTORY MONTH and receives plenty of dirty looks. But he also gets more support than he suspected — after he explains that history should be part of the American story, told even during months with more than 28 or 29 days.

As he goes about his somewhat whimsical quest, some caution him that without that annual anchor, there’d be even less black history taught than before. He takes his campaign on the road; peers into the home of the month’s originator, Carter G. Woodson in Washington, D.C.; meets with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History; and goes to Virginia to see what black history means to big fans of the Confederacy.

Eventually he gets more serious about his task, realizing that while history may convey how we were, the way we tell history conveys how we are. And he’s had one direct effect: His mother, an activist, moves the date for a black history performance she had been planning out of February to help demonstrate that it is part of the fabric of U.S. history all year round.

One day, even television networks may spread their black-heritage documentaries beyond the confines of February as well. Unfortunately, two remarkable documentaries air at the same time Tuesday in many markets.

After demonstrating that he’s a sensitive observer of life in black America with “Hoop Dreams,” Steve James is back with “The Interrupters” – a more ambitious film that follows a fearless group of activists and amateur psychologists determined to end urban violence. It makes its national TV debut this evening on Frontline (check local listings).

That James and author Alex Kotlowitz (“There Are No Children Here”) decided to focus on Chicago at the precise time its youth-killing rates and lurid viral videos made it a national news story put them in the center of the cyclone. Their alarming footage, from the center of exploding violence and retribution, put the superficial approach of the national news media and government officials — who did little more than hold press conferences — to shame.

Even more remarkable are the counselors and community-minded people, many of whom learned their lessons in the streets, who put their lives on the line to defuse the mayhem out of a regard for love and doing what’s right.

Among them, Ameena Matthews deserves to be some kind of national heroine for her street sense, humor, decency, insight and bravery, which seem to change everyone she approaches. No matter how explosive the situation, she can enter, speak sensibly and have people listen.

James and Kotlowitz do treat their subjects seriously, listen to what they have to say and show how the activists are getting things done. For the inches of progress made before our eyes, it’s a hopeful film.

“The Loving Story,” on HBO, may seem like it is tied to Valentine’s Day. But it’s only providence that the couple at the center of the story is also named Loving.

But loving is the key. Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter were both members of a small community in Virginia where whites and blacks freely worked and socialized. They met and fell in love, and like anyone else might do, got married.

But there were laws in Virginia, as there were in more than a dozen other states, outlawing any such mixing of races through marriage, using a word that is as ugly as the prejudice, miscegenation.

Somebody called the cops and the happily married duo were hit with a felony charge in 1958 — and a year in jail – which would be suspended if they’d just leave the state. Any visits back to see family or friends would have to be done individually, lest they risk arrest. They decided to fight the law, not only for their own sake, but as Mrs. Loving says in the sweetest possible way, for other people as well — because “it isn’t right.”

“The Loving Story” is in some ways the exciting case of the two young American Civil Liberties Union lawyers who agreed to take the case on and brought it to the U.S. Supreme Court. But that’s only because lawyers like to talk, especially looking back at what they can now see was the biggest case of their lives. Although there is a surprising amount of footage of the Lovings in the film, they never do say very much. They just want the right thing done. And in the end, it is.

The two are not around to tell their story, though one of their daughters is. He died in a car accident in 1975; she in 2008 at 68, surrounded by family and friends. The last anti-miscegenation law wasn’t repealed until 2000 in Alabama. Theirs is a love story that hasn’t been fully told previously — and may not have had a showcase had it not been for Black History Month.