Yesterday, MLB on FOX announced their 26 week schedule for the upcoming 2010 regular season. For the first time since 2004, the schedule will include plans to place two games in prime-time.

As soon as the news was released, questions immediately started being raised asking how MLB’s television blackout might be impacted.

As a reminder, due to an exclusivity agreement with MLB, on each Saturday that FOX airs games, the entire U.S. has all games blacked out between 1:10 PM ET and 7:00 PM ET.

With the 2010 regular season schedule released by FOX, the prime-time games begin at 7:00 PM ET, just when the current blackout policy ends. The question is, will the blackout window be shifted forward to account for the start time, or will it be extended to move past the 7:00 PM ET window till the game were to end?

Representatives from both MLB and FOX Sports say that the details are still being worked out and that a definitive policy on the prime-time games is forthcoming as the first prime-time game on Saturday, May 22nd approaches.

More details as they become available.

Maury Brown is the Founder and President of the Business of Sports Network, which includes The Biz of Baseball, The Biz of Football, The Biz of Basketball and The Biz of Hockey. He is available for hire or freelance. Brown's full bio is here. He looks forward to your comments via email and can be contacted through the Business of Sports Network.

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Comments (9)

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written by Jonathan Carter, February 04, 2010

$100 bucks says the blackouts will be all day from 1pm - 10pm. MLB does everything it can to make sure it's fans can't watch their product.

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written by Robert S., February 05, 2010

If Bonehead Selig cares about the fans and FOX as a partner, he'll have all non-FOX games moved to daytime and lift the normal saturday afternoon blackout window. The window on just those two FOX primetime dates would start at 7pm ET just to insure FOX protection if any of the non-FOX game clubs decide not to move the game to daytime as preferred.

Of course, the commish being Bonehead Selig, I concur with Jonathan Carter's comment about an all-day blackout.

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written by rickde, February 05, 2010

The blackout times should only be 3 or 4 hours.
If it is a 1:00 game then blackout till 4, if its a 4:00 till 7:00 and if it is a 7:00 game
till 10:00. It was always been ridiculous that they blackout games for 6 hours

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written by Bruce79, February 05, 2010

Not sure who to blame more - the aforementioned "Bonehead Selig" or Fox, who - when they cover my teams games - I tend to mute in favor of the radios broadcast. Either way, those of us out here in the fan nations will get screwed.

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Dumb arse Selig
written by NebraskaRSfan, February 05, 2010

Two years ago, I contacted several different law firms around to the country. My question to them was 'If I am paying money to receive broadcasts of a particular baseball team, then how does MLB, who is receiving some of that money, have the right to 'blackout' the game?'

One law firm felt that there was sufficient conflicts in that policy that a cla*s action law suit would have considerable merit. The challenge was that if a law firm spent 6 to 9 months gathering facts and preparing a case, once it was filed, all MLB had to do was lift or change the 'blackout' policy and the law suit would be made moot. In essence all we need to do is find someone with deep pockets to finance the development and filing of a cla*s action suit.

Selig is quite aware of the enormous stupidity and conflict in MLB black out polices which go well beyond just the Fox contract.

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written by Al Rosinski, February 05, 2010

It's alright by me as long as they don't have the windbag Joe "the mouth " Brown as heir announcer.

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Sr
written by mascmen7, February 05, 2010

Saturday is a day off for most Americans, a great day to watch a baseball game. No, says MLB. We have made a contract with Fox to blackout entire USA all day and night so that you will not be able to watch your favorite home team. Does Bud Selig have Alzheimers or is it the Milwaukee cold that froze his brain????

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written by david b, February 05, 2010

why not blackout the game fox is showing and show the rest on the package like they do with the NFL package???????

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Games should not be blackout at all
written by Kevin A, February 06, 2010

I think that there shold be no blackouts on Games not airing on Fox. As a matter of fact thay should not blackout any game that fox is not airing in your broadcat area. Then again it would be nice if there was no blackout on any of games. Even if you can see them in your local broadcast area at all but that will never happen.

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