Baseball analyst Steve Phillips was fired by ESPN on Sunday night, less than a week after he admitted having an affair with a production assistant at the cable network.
By Barry M. Bloom / MLB.com
ESPN and the new MLB Network will televise the entire slate of 39 World Baseball Classic games next year from March 5-23, it was announced on Tuesday.
ESPN will televise 23 games of the tournament in the U.S., including the semifinal and final games, across ESPN and ESPN2, and on its Spanish-language platform ESPN Deportes.
The MLB Network, which will launch on basic cable to a record potential audience of 50 million homes this Jan. 1, is slated to broadcast 16 of the Classic games.
MLB Network, ESPN to televise Classic....
BRISTOL, Conn. (AP) — Major League Baseball and ESPN signed a new digital rights agreement that will allow the sports network to put baseball content on multiple platforms, including video game consoles and portable players such as iPods.
The deal announced Thursday extends and expands the agreement through 2013. The previous agreement could have expired as early as this year. Terms were not disclosed.
ESPN said the deal will allow for live game streaming and highlights packages on the Internet and mobile platforms. It also will allow ESPN to develop interactive television programming around baseball content.
ESPN will be able to put MLB content on download services like Apple's iTunes Store and console game systems such as Microsoft Xbox Live.
"Our goal is always to deliver sports to fans across any platform, and this is yet another agreement that fulfills that strategy," George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN and ABC Sports, said in a statement.
ESPN signs digital rights deal with baseball....
