Japanese TV

> I was wondering if anyone knew who the Japanese TV
> stations that broadcast the Mariner games pay? Do
> they pay the Mariners? Wouldn't that be a big
> economical boast for the Mariners? Thakns
>
> kev

No. National and international broadcast deals are negotiated by Major League Baseball, Inc., not the individual teams. NHK pays MLB money for a certain number of games, and then chooses those games depending on who's playing (Japanese player = broadcast). NHK has chosen to show mostly Mariners games, with the occassional Nomo, Shinjo and Taguchi game, but they could easily choose to show all Cubs games if they so wished. In fact, before Nomo went over to MLB, NHK did show a variety of various teams.

The money from international broadcast deals goes into MLB's central fund, where it is partly distributed among teams for revenue sharing, and partly used for MLB's own costs (support personnel's salaries, collusion settlement payments, etc.).

Thanks for the help. But I have another question: Does anyone have any idea how much Japanese TV stations pay to broadcast? Any sort of estimate or lead would be great. Thank you.

That sort of thing isn't covered in the sports dailies. Perhaps asking NHK or MLB would be more appropriate (although they may have confiditiality concerns with their contracts).

Yes, NHK (equivalant to PBS) through their satelite channel (paid service) negotiates a contact with the Mariners every year to broadcast every game and I mean every game. The news media doesn't release the figures on the contract. Yes, it is a big economical boost for the Mariners and incidently this puts pressure on Lou to play Ichiro even if he may not want to.

> Yes, NHK (equivalant to PBS) through their satelite
> channel (paid service) negotiates a contact with the
> Mariners every year to broadcast every game and I
> mean every game. The news media doesn't release the
> figures on the contract. Yes, it is a big economical
> boost for the Mariners and incidently this puts
> pressure on Lou to play Ichiro even if he may not
> want to.

This is untrue, as far as I know. I refer you to this article:

Which contains the following paragraph:

"The Mariners hope some of the international interest translates into increased revenues. Although the television rights fees are split evenly among all 30 big-league clubs, Mariner CEO Howard Lincoln said the club expects financial gains by selling some signage space inside Safeco Field to Japanese businesses."

So, the Mariners may get some revenues from advertising in Safeco, but they don't keep all the broadcasting revenue.

Also, I highly doubt that the Mariners' games being broadcast on NHK puts any undue pressure on Lou Pinella. It has been the case where Lou has played Ichiro in spring training games that are broadcast in Japan; for example, Ichiro played in the Padres-Mariners charity game this spring because it was going to be broadcast in Japan. But I do not believe that Lou has been or would be influenced to play Ichiro against his better judgement during the regular season. Last season, for example, Lou rested Ichiro for a game during the last week of the season, even though it meant that Ichiro could not break the record for games with a hit. That's a situation where I could imagine NHK wanting Ichiro to play, but in the end he did not...

While on the topic of Japanese TV, what's with TV stations only showing games from 7pm-9:54pm (at best)? How annoying is it when there's two outs in the bottom of the ninth, tie-game, and runners on, and you get the "our broadcasting time will be over in 30 seconds. Bye."

How annoying is it? Very annoying, but you learn to live with it, just like you have to learn to live with rush-hour trains that are jam-packed and learn to live with the humidity in the summer. Other than those little annoyances, Japan isn't a bad place to live.

Gee whiz Mr. Guest, the poor guy didn't say he hated living in Japan - it was just a comment about the TV schedules, that's all.

But of course the remedy is to get connected to cable, or go live in an area where the local station has a real commitment to the local team. Where I am, you can see Hanshin and Kintetsu games right through to the end on SUN-TV or cable.

I think the main offender is Yomiuri TV - they have the exclusive rights to Giants home games, and not only cut the end off games, they also begin their broadcasts at 7:00 (at least in Kansai), so the viewers get to miss the whole first hour of play.

I had an interesting conversation once with the person at the local ABC affiliate whose job was to press the button to cut the coverage. I told her that the fans were always angry about it, and couldn't they have a split screen or something if they really had to go to the next program. She said yes, they were aware that what they were doing was unpopular, and yes, they were in the process of considering split screens, but, well, these things take time, so everybody had to be patient. This was about five years ago.

Thanks for backing me up there. This has nothing to do with how i feel about living in Japan. As "mijow" says, Sun-TV plays games start to finish, and as I am from Kobe, I'm used to that. Since living in Tokyo, the joy of seeing the first and last pitches have gone, and it's a pity. Oh well, guess I'll have to succumb and get cable at some point...