It's not just TV. It's your payroll
With a baseball strike looming, etc., etc., one thing that usually seems lost in the whole shuffle about revenues, player salaries, etc., is the effect of local TV contracts. I can sorta see this just from what games get fed into our office on a nightly basis. There's always some big hubbub about why we never get certain games. In some cases, it's because of some bad satellite/DSS arrangements here. But in other cases, I've realized some of the "poorer" teams just don't have good TV contracts and thus when the two of them are playing, it's a crapshoot if we'll get the game.

The Montreal Expos are obviously a prime example since they barely got any local TV or radio deals for the past few years. But I've noticed teams like the Reds, A's, Brewers, Pirates, Royals and Twins not appearing as often on local TV as they should be (and thus we're not getting their feeds here). I don't have hard numbers in front of me, but you've got to wonder if even 50-60 percent of their games are televised at all (whether it be on a local broadcast station or a cable affiliate, likely a Fox Sports one). I'm sure they are, since they'll probably appear on the satellite packages (bad geography in my complex prevents me from getting a dish), but it seems like it's few and far between.

Plus, it doesn't help that their deals are dwarfed by the juggernaut of the Yankees and their YES Network (after finishing up a ridiculously lucrative deal with MSG that set the precedent for their huge spending today). Some of those teams can negotiate big deals and get lots of games shown while others scrape by and most of us seeing their games, but with other announcers calling them.