Major League Baseball on Freeform
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| Major League Baseball on Freeform | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Major League Baseball game telecasts |
| Directed by | Doug Freeman Dave Hagen Jim Lynch Larry Meyers Jeff Mitchell |
| Starring | Kenny Albert (2001) Rod Allen (2001) Chris Berman (2002) Thom Brennaman (2001) Joe Buck (2001) Tony Gwynn (2002) Rex Hudler (2001) Josh Lewin (2001) Tim McCarver (2001) Jon Miller (2002) Joe Morgan (2002) Dave O'Brien (2002) Rick Sutcliffe (2002) |
| Theme music composer | NJJ Music |
| Composer(s) | NJJ Music |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 3 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Jeff Gowan Pete Macheska Jerry Weinstein Jim Zrake |
| Production location(s) | Various Major League Baseball stadiums |
| Camera setup | Multi-camera |
| Running time | 180 minutes or until game ended |
| Production company(s) | Fox Sports ESPN |
| Release | |
| Original network | Fox Family (2000–2001) ABC Family (2002) |
| Chronology | |
| Followed by | ESPN DayGame |
| Related shows | Major League Baseball on Fox Thursday Night Baseball ESPN Major League Baseball |
| External links | |
| [{{#property:P856}} Website] | |
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Major League Baseball on Freeform is an informal title used for the presentation of Major League Baseball games on the predecessor networks for the American cable television channel, Freeform.
Background[edit]
In 1997, as part of the contract with Major League Baseball it had signed the year before, Fox gained an additional outlet for its coverage. Its recently launched cable sports network, Fox Sports Net, was given rights to two Thursday night games per week, one for the Eastern and Central time zones and one for the Mountain and Pacific time zones.
In 2000, as part of an exclusive contract Fox signed with MLB, that coverage passed to Fox Family Channel and was reduced to one game per week.
Fox Family's coverage[edit]
In April 2000, Fox Family began airing Major League Baseball games in prime time on most weeks during the league's regular season, on an alternating basis with then-sister network FX. The network – which acquired the rights from Fox Sports Net, which aired the weekly telecasts across its regional sports networks (except in markets where the nationally televised game conflicts with scheduled sporting events involving local teams on the individual FSN outlet) from 1997 to 1999 – usually ran the games on either Thursday or Saturday nights.
Starting with the 2001 season, the network also carried games from the first round of the MLB playoffs, the Division Series, which did not air on Fox. Among the games that aired on Fox Family included one between the San Francisco Giants and the Houston Astros on October 4, 2001, in which Barry Bonds hit his 70th home run of the season, tying the all-time single season record that Mark McGwire had set only three years earlier (Bonds would break the record the following night).
Play-by-play announcers for the FSN/Fox Family coverage included Kenny Albert, Thom Brennaman, Chip Caray, Josh Lewin, and Steve Physioc. Color analysts included Bob Brenly, Kevin Kennedy, Steve Lyons, and Jeff Torborg. Occasionally, FSN would simulcast a local-team feed of a game from one of its affiliated regional sports networks in lieu of a dedicated national production.
ABC Family's coverage[edit]
ESPN and ESPN2 had contracts (which were signed in 2000 and ran through 2005) to show selected weeknight and Sunday Night Baseball games, along with Opening Day and holiday games and selected Division Series playoff games. The contracts with ESPN were worth $141.8 million per year and $851 million overall.
After Disney bought Fox Family in 2002 to become ABC Family the Division Series games aired on ABC Family (with ESPN's announcers, graphics, and music) for one year. The only usage of the ABC Family "bug" was for a ten-second period when returning from a commercial break (in the lower right corner of the screen). ESPN then added these games, along with the Thursday night games (subsequently shifted to weekday afternoon "DayGame" broadcasts), to its package.
Game 2 (played on October 2) of the Minnesota/Oakland playoff series in 2002 started on ESPN2 because the San Francisco-Atlanta game (which started at 1 p.m. Eastern Time) ran over the three-hour time window. The game was eventually switched back to ABC Family once the early game ended.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
External links[edit]
This article "Major League Baseball on Freeform" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Major League Baseball on Freeform. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
