Executive editor Staci D. Kramer reported from CTIA on Major League Baseball’s sweeping advanced media plans, including full video games to be offered on mobile phones sometime during the 2005 season. At NCTA, she caught up with Tony Vinciquerra, head of Fox Cable Networks, who — to put it mildly — isn’t happy with MLB’s planned mobilecasts of games his national and regional networks pay big money for the right to produce and air games. Fox wants input, compensation and strong local rights protection. Vinciquerra didn’t rule out legal action.Some highlights:– “They’re taking our rights away and we hate it. We have a fight with them every day about something. We’re paying $400 million a year for the rights to Major League Baseball and whatever number of teams we have on our RSNs right now, 16 or 18, we’re paying hundreds of millions of dollars there and major league baseball wants to take those games and provide them on all those other platforms.”– “Baseball’s plan is to take this business and go IPO it somewhere and share it with the owners so they want another bite at the revenue stream …”– “It is exciting and we want to be part of it — but we’ve got to be part of it, not just be lorded over.” More here.
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