MLB on TBS is an American presentation of regular season and postseason Major League Baseball (MLB) game telecasts that air on the American pay television network TBS and the streaming service HBO Max. The games are produced by TNT Sports (formerly known as Turner Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery Sports).
History Pre-2007: relationship with the Braves
Atlanta Braves baseball games had been a local staple on Atlanta independent station WTBS (channel 17, now WPCH-TV; which, like TBS, was owned by Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting System) since Turner acquired the team's broadcast rights in 1973, and subsequently gained national prominence when the station was uplinked to satellite in December 1976, becoming one of America's first superstations. Along with Chicago-based WGN-TV and New York-based WWOR-TV, WTBS was one of the few television stations that broadcast local sporting events to a national audience, with some even giving the Braves the title "America's Team".
1983 marked the last time that local telecasts of League Championship Series games were allowed. In 1982, Major League Baseball recognized a problem with this due to the emergence of cable superstations such as WTBS in Atlanta and WGN-TV in Chicago. When TBS tried to petition for the right to do a "local" Braves broadcast of the 1982 NLCS, Major League Baseball got a Philadelphia federal court to ban them on the grounds that as a cable superstation, TBS's telecast would compete with the national broadcast on ABC.
On July 11, 1988, the day before the Major League Baseball All-Star Game from Cincinnati, TBS televised the annual All-Star Gala from the Cincinnati Zoo. Larry King hosted the broadcast with Craig Sager and Pete Van Wieren handling interviews. The broadcast's big draw would have been the Home Run Derby, which TBS intended on taping during the afternoon, and later airing it in prime time during the Gala coverage. The Gala coverage also had some pre-taped features such as highlights from previous All-Star Games, a segment on Cincinnati's baseball history, a video recap of the 1988 season's first half and, a slow-motion highlight montage set to "This Is the Time" by Styx frontman Dennis DeYoung. However, the derby and a skills competition were canceled due to rain. As a result, TBS scrambled to try to fill nearly an hour of now-open airtime. For example, the Gatlin Brothers, the event's musical guests, who had already played a full concert, were asked to come back out and play some more.
Sister network TNT was actually in the running to gain the cable portion of the baseball television rights beginning in 1990. However, ESPN won the final bid with the league.
When Major League Baseball was realigned into three divisions each within the American and National Leagues in 1994, TBS offered Major League Baseball US$40-$45 million a year for rights to another round of postseason games (presumably, matches from the newly created Division Series). Instead, Major League Baseball along with ABC and NBC formed a revenue sharing joint venture called The Baseball Network (which was dissolved after the 1995 season). Meanwhile, CBS was offering $130 million a year to renew its previous contract (a four-year agreement that began in 1990 and ran until 1993) before being shut out, as well.
During NBC's coverage of the 2000 Division Series between the New York Yankees and Oakland Athletics, regular play-by-play announcer Bob Costas decided to take a breather after anchoring NBC's prime time coverage of the Summer Olympic Games from Sydney. In Costas' place was Atlanta Braves announcer Skip Caray, who teamed with Joe Morgan before Costas' return for the ALCS. It was not just Costas but all of NBC's production crews who were down in Sydney. The Olympics ended just two days before the MLB playoffs started that year, so the TBS crew worked the Division Series games for NBC.
In 2003, the Braves telecasts on TBS underwent significant changes for the first time in many years, reflecting an increase in TBS's rights fee payments to Major League Baseball. In turn, national sponsors could fulfill their advertising commitments by purchasing ads on TBS, in addition to ESPN or Fox. In the process, Don Sutton and Joe Simpson assumed duties as lead commentators, while longtime play-by-play announcers Skip Caray and Pete Van Wieren had their participation on the broadcasts reduced. This was done in an attempt to combat criticism of Caray's on-air "home team" bias and to market its baseball coverage to fans of MLB teams other than the Braves. Meanwhile, the brand Braves Baseball on TBS was replaced by MLB on TBS. The move was strongly criticized by Braves fans, Atlanta area media outlets and Braves manager Bobby Cox. Over 90% of Braves fans who voted in an online poll conducted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution preferred Caray and Van Wieren to the more neutral broadcasts. The move backfired, and ratings for the TBS broadcasts declined sharply. After that year's All-Star break, TBS brought back Caray and Van Wieren to work with the two analysts, while broadcasts reverted to the Braves Baseball on TBS brand the following year.
2007–2021: National postseason and Sunday afternoon games On October 17, 2006, TBS signed an agreement with Major League Baseball which earned TBS exclusive rights to all Division Series playoff games, one of the League Championship Series, as well as rights to the All-Star Selection Show held in late June or early July, from 2007 to 2013. A national Sunday afternoon baseball package was also planned starting with the 2008 season. As a part of the deal, the Turner Broadcasting System management decided to limit Braves games to local telecasts within the Atlanta market. On October 1, 2007, the Turner Broadcasting System severed the ties between WTBS and the TBS cable channel, converting the Atlanta station into an in-market independent station that assumed the call letters WPCH-TV, branding on-air as "Peachtree TV".
Along with this, Comcast and other cable providers within the Atlanta market began carrying the national TBS feed for the first time. WPCH-TV continued to air Braves games, but they were only broadcast within the team's designated market area and throughout Canada; in the latter case, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission never allowed the TBS cable feed to be eligible for carriage on Canadian cable and satellite providers as a superstation, only giving permission for the Atlanta area signal (whose programming largely overlapped with the national version of the channel outside of public affairs and E/I-compliant programming seen only on WTBS). WPCH would lose television rights to the Braves after 40 years in 2013, when Fox Sports South – which took over production responsibilities for the games from Turner Sports after the Meredith Corporation, owner of Atlanta's CBS affiliate WGCL-TV (channel 46), assumed WPCH's operations through a local marketing agreement formed in 2011 – acquired the regional television rights to the station's 45-game package beginning with the 2014 season. All games included a Spanish language play-by-play feed that was transmitted via the SAP audio channel.
For the 2012 and 2013 seasons, TBS was awarded the rights to televise both Wild Card Playoff games that occur the day before the Division Series games. In exchange, MLB Network was awarded the rights to televise two Division Series games, rights that previously belonged to TBS. TBS retained the right to air any tie-breaker games to determine the team that moves onto a Wild Card Playoff game which are considered part of the regular season; this occurred in 2013 with a match-up between the Tampa Bay Rays and Texas Rangers.
2015 contract renewal In 2011, CBS—a former MLB broadcaster from 1990 to 1993—aired two Turner-produced MLB studio specials: the MLB Midseason Report on July 2, 2011, and the postseason preview special MLB 2011: Down the Stretch on September 24. Both specials were aired under the CBS Sports Spectacular branding, and featured the TBS studio panel. In August 2012, The New York Times reported that Turner and CBS Sports were exploring a partnership to bid on the next round of MLB media rights beginning in 2015, similarly to their joint coverage of the NCAA men's basketball tournament that began the previous year. However, it was suggested that CBS would "most likely" be interested in the All-Star Game and World Series only, echoing the league's previous agreement with NBC from 1996 to 2000.
On October 2, 2012, Turner Sports renewed its contract with Major League Baseball through the 2021 season. TBS would retain a non-exclusive late-season package of 13 regular season games on Sunday afternoons, down from 26 under the previous contract, and now co-existing with local broadcasts. Postseason coverage would now be split between TBS, Fox, and MLB Network, with TBS carrying most of the Division Series and Championship Series games for one of the leagues per-season (the American League in even numbered years and the National League in odd numbered years). The opposite league's games, as well as the World Series, would be carried by Fox networks. MLB Network would carry selected games in both the ALDS and NLDS, while rights to the wild card games began to be split between TBS and ESPN, the extra tiebreaker games that previously aired on TBS also moved to ESPN. The contract was valued at $2.8 billion over eight seasons.
2022–present: National postseason and Tuesday night games
On September 24, 2020, it was announced that Turner Sports had renewed its rights through 2028 (aligned with the conclusion of Fox's most recent extension). A major change in the contract is the replacement of TBS's late-season Sunday games with a new primetime game on most Tuesday nights beginning in the 2022 season (each season there were 26 games, up from the previous contract of 13). Most of the existing postseason broadcasting arrangements remain in place, however it lost its wild card game to ESPN (due to its renewal and expansion of the wild card series round), with TBS holding rights to two Division Series and the Championship Series for one league annually, and games no longer siphoned to MLB Network (the channel will instead hold the Spanish-language rights to all games aired in English by Turner). Turner Sports is also receiving additional digital rights for Bleacher Report and "additional WarnerMedia platforms". The value of the contract was reported to have increased to $535 million per-season.
During the final month of the 2024 Major League Baseball season, TBS' sister network TruTV will air MLB Race to the Pennant on Tuesday nights. The show will feature a whip-around format hosted by Alanna Rizzo and Yonder Alonso. MLB Tuesday will also air doubleheaders the final three weeks of the season. One of the doubleheaders will feature one game instead on TruTV, marking the first time the network has aired a regular season MLB game in full.
Viewers and ratings +Regular-season viewers Season Avg. Viewers Change Ref 2008 624,000 — 2009 614,000 –2% 2010 557,000 –9% 2011 556,000 –0% 2012 448,000 –19% 2013 375,000 –16% 2014 309,000 –18% 2015 413,000 +34%
Scheduling