MLB Pulls Podcasts from iTunes

Posted by Alejandro A. Leal on Thursday September 28th 2006, 5:19 pm, filed in Biz sense, News reel

In what continues to be a common pattern where Major League Baseball is divorced from reality – not to mention shutting out fans, it has asked Apple to remove all content created by the league’s Advance Media arm.

From AppleInsider

The Internet arm of Major League Baseball has pulled podcast clips of its games from Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes Store, in a move to exercise greater control over how its games are presented online, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Bob Bowman, chief executive of Major League Baseball Advance Media, told the Journal that Apple declined to give its podcasts better visibility on the site when the league asked for it. It’s reported that Apple does not accept monetary offers for improved placement.

Bowman also said Apple wouldn’t give the league a say in where promotions for its podcasts would appear on iTunes, leading to situations in which the league’s content was adjacent to podcasts by individual baseball fans.

Not that many people cared for MLB Radio Daily or Radio Rewind; but Selig and Bowman should take note of what the top sports podcasts are right this instant – almost all come from ESPN. Why wouldn’t the boys from Bristol have a problem with their suff freely distributed all over the iTunes Store, beating out low quality indy baseball podcasts?

Read about the first MP3 player , the battle over downloading free online music or the the popularity of streaming music on the Internet.

Because they probably realize that ads within podcasts is the sure way to cover their production costs (although it’s true that almost all of ESPN’s content was already produced for Radio and TV; any internet dissemination is better than having it archived where no one can reach it).

MLB Radio is solely produced by the league; by pulling its podcasts from iTunes, they’re going to experience a drop in susbscriptions and downloads. Do they trust that people will go the extra click just to listen to Vinny Miccuci’s whiny-ass voice?