Do you hear that sound? Yes it’s much rejoicing from around Brewers Nation and no it’s got nothing to do with Ryan Braun other than seeing him on your TV screen in a Brewers uniform. That rejoicing you are hearing comes from the announcement of the full 2012 Brewers TV Schedule. It was announced that 150 of the 162 games will be carried by Fox Sports Wisconsin and ZERO games will be on WMLW (over the air Milwaukee only channel). It was also announced that for the first time since the 2004 Fox Sports Wisconsin will be the “exclusive broadcast partner” of the Brewers.
Admittedly you may have already heard this bit of news, but it’s also been buried like everything else by the lifting of Ryan Braun’s 50 game suspension. Is no WMLW a good or bad thing for Brewers fans?
Well, in short it depends on where you live. According to the JSOnline report referenced above about 20% of Milwaukee households are over the air exclusive households (10% is the national average). So they will be losing some games. However, if you’re like myself and don’t live in Milwaukee it’s the best bit of news on the broadcast side of things in years.
Gone are the days of having to struggle to find how you can watch the game or having to go exclusively to a local establishment of your choice because your carrier doesn’t have a certain channel or package available. Also gone are the days of having a game blacked out outside of Milwaukee and having to try and watch a game through the MLB Extra Innings Package’s mix channel in a tiny box that’s barely visible.
It also means that all games will be available in HD and we all know the difference HD can make in enjoying a baseball game after suffering through the WMLW games over the past few seasons.
Another plus is that we’ll get 6 Spring Training games, starting on March 2nd, so at least you’ll be able to see the team if you aren’t lucky enough to be traveling to Arizona for games.
In total right now 156 of the 162 regular season games will be available between FSN Wisconsin and Fox (national broadcasts). That leaves just 6 games left untelevised at the moment and that’s fine by me as I love me some Uecker and it will also give us a chance to get used to his new partner Joe Block.
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