Is This a Good Thing Or a Bad Thing?

I read in the papers yesterday that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts said that he plans on meeting with the FCC Chairman Kevin Martin about the MLB Extra Innings package possibly being taken away from cable and moving over to DirecTV.

With Kerry and his record for putting his foot in his mouth, I was a bit worried when I heard this. He's never been one of my favorite people in Washington. Here's an article about Kerry and Extra Innings from Yahoo.com yesterday:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A proposal to make Major League Baseball's "Extra Innings" exclusive to DirecTV has drawn the ire of Sen. John Kerry.

The Massachusetts Democrat said he plans to raise the matter with the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission at a hearing Thursday.

"I am opposed to anything that deprives people of reasonable choices," Kerry said in a statement. "In this day and age, consumers should have more choices -- not fewer. I'd like to know how this serves the public -- a deal that will force fans to subscribe to DirecTV in order to tune in to their favorite players. A Red Sox fan ought to be able to watch their team without having to switch to DirecTV." (Amen to that, Senator Kerry!)

"Extra Innings" is a service that allows viewers to watch games involving teams not in their local markets. In past years, the service has been available through a range of providers, but a pending deal would make the service only available to DirecTV subscribers.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is a scheduled witness at Thursday's hearing of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

In all seriousness though, if John Kerry can make enough waves to get MLB to reconsider this ill-advised move, more power to him. Hopefully, enough politicians will side with him to pressure baseball to keep Extra Innings on regular cable for 2007, and beyond.