A big gamble

TBS aims to transform Braves' games into something bigger

The business of television sports is pure cutthroat sometimes. The competition for viewers, and for the lifeblood of money from advertisers, is a bear, plain and simple.

TBS, the self-proclaimed "Superstation," has been dealing with that reality for years. Back in the day, in the late 1980s and early '90s, the cable station's broadcasts of Atlanta Braves games pulled a strong 2.0 rating, sometimes even higher. The Braves were "America's Team." Money was pouring in. Television life was good.

Not any more. These days, with sports channels and sports leagues competing for viewers up and down the dial, TBS' sports ratings, like almost everyone else's, have slid into the Dumpster. Last season, TBS averaged a 1.4 rating (somewhere around 1.3 million households) for its 89-game Braves' schedule. It was around that the year before, too. The ratings have been flat for years, in fact.

Which is why the corporate brains of TBS got together with their counterparts at Turner Sports and Turner Broadcasting last winter and decided to shake things up. They consulted focus groups. They huddled. They talked things over. And they came up with this:

The baseball broadcasts on the "Superstation" this year will no longer be tagged as the "Braves on TBS." They'll be the "MLB on TBS."

Sure, it's still the Braves. Ninety games worth of them. But there's another team playing, too, and the TBS people figure that they may be able to pull a few more eyes to their broadcasts -- and, remember, the money follows the eyes -- if they play up the national angle and play down the regional ties.

Or, as executive producer Mike Pearl puts it, TBS plans "to present a more universal and national feel for the broadcast."

TBS wants to do that in a couple of ways. First, TBS will show more highlights from other games in progress, jumping to the studio and host Erin Andrews often during the broadcasts. There will be a ticker with scores from the other games, too, at least once every half-inning.

And then, of course, there's the biggie. The real bold move. The move that already has enraged fans in Atlanta, and elsewhere, before the first broadcast of the year.

Skip Caray and Pete Van Wieren, the longtime announcers for the Braves?

Gone.

Relegated to 36 games on regional channel Turner South (6.4 million homes, compared to TBS' 87 million) and 90 more on the team's radio network.

Caray, 62, the son of longtime Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray, and Van Wieren, 57, were simply too Braves for the new TBS, the executives decided. Too homerish.

"I think the thing that people have missed," Pearl says, "is that the series needed a reevaluation, and this is the time to do it. Not during the playoffs."

The backlash over the move has been swift, sure and not at all unexpected. Hundreds of letters and e-mails and phone calls of complaint. A poll on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Web site that 20,000-plus people voted in, more than 90 percent of them ripping the move.

But Caray and Van Wieren, after all, have been calling Braves games for 28 years. They have become as big a part of the Braves as Chipper Jones, Bobby Cox or Greg Maddux. They are, really, much bigger.

That, according to the folks at TBS, is exactly the point. On a national broadcast, on "MLB on TBS," Braves' guys are not wanted anymore. Even on a network that carries only Braves games.

The decision to go national, or try to, could backfire, of course. TBS could lose those loyal fans that are upset over not having Skip and Pete. The broadcasting team that is replacing Caray and Van Wieren -- former players Don Sutton and Joe Simpson, both veterans of the four-man Braves broadcast rotation -- could fail to click.

But TBS executives are hoping the new team will work, and what TBS may lose in diehard fans will be offset by gains nationally with the new format.

"We've been squeezing this orange for an awfully long time," says Pearl, who has been with TBS for eight years. But Pearl also will admit that, yes, "there's a concern when you do anything like this."

For their parts, both Van Wieren and Caray have played the parts of the ultimate professionals in this little television drama. They have been low-key, declining to complain about it publicly, though others, including Braves manager Cox, have stood up for them. Still, going from a station that reaches into 87 million homes to one that doesn't reach 7 million has to sting some.

Friday night, TBS kicks off its 31st season of Braves telecasts when the Florida Marlins come to Turner Field. TBS' Braves games are the most-watched baseball games on cable, more than ESPN's or WGN's or anyone else's.

The decision to toy with the formula that has made TBS so successful will be watched throughout the industry. If successful -- if more fans tune in to see highlights from other games and to hear less about the Braves -- it is a decision that could affect games all over television.

If not -- if fans miss Skip and Pete and tune out TBS, if Sutton and Simpson don't wow, if the Braves get off to a worse start than they've already endured, if any number of things happen and the ratings don't improve, or they actually get worse -- the decision to change a formula that has worked for so long will be panned.

That's sports television these days. It's a bear out there.

AOL Time Warner Corp. is the parent company for TBS and SI.com.

John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com.