Rappers Keep Mets Off the Air, Briefly

You all may know that Fox has an exclusive window on all baseball from the 4-7 PM ET on Saturdays. Teams can schedule games from 1 PM on Saturdays and the games can be shown in their own home markets.

But yesterday, the Florida Marlins scheduled their game at 6:05 PM, because of a rap concert taking place later in the evening. So that meant the Mets and Marlins could not show their game to their audiences until 7:05 PM when the Fox window ended.

So SportsNet New York, the Mets station, did a very smart thing yesterday. They had a split screen with their regular programming, and had a statement on the screen telling fans that because of MLB rules they could not begin showing the game until 7. But they also put as much info about the game going on as possible: the score, who was up, who was pitching, the count, the runners on base.

At 7, the first two innings were just completed with no score, so the fans fortunately did not miss too much. But you have to wonder what the Marlins brass was thinking scheduling a game during the Fox exclusivity time (which I think is silly, but that's another story). But I would bet the Mets' radio numbers picked up for a brief time yesterday.