CEO Of MLB Advanced Media Is Worried About The Napster Effect

Bob Bowman sat down with Mike Ozanian from Forbes and YES Network's Forbes SportsMoney to discuss major league baseball's streaming product and the depths of its awesomeness. If you feel like ending it all, feel free to watch that video up there.

If you don't feel like blowing your brains out, allow me to summarize. This is a five minute-ish video where major league baseball shows off its mystifying talent to be remarkably popularity despite itself. According to the video, various big time media outlets—even Glenn Beck!—use MLB's streaming technology. It makes sense that baseball would have the best option and that others would crave it. Baseball has the most games to show across the country so it sort of had to develop something useful.

The best part, though, is Bowman warning that baseball cannot be blind to history. He references what happened to the music industry. The presumption is he means Napster. You remember Napster, that awesome time when people stopped buying shitty albums because they could get the songs they wanted without all the garbage filler, and they could get it for free. Video online is where it's at these days though, Bowman notes, so baseball needs to make sure it stays ahead of the curve so it doesn't piss off paying customers so much that they try to find a less restrictive avenue to enjoy the product.

It's a smart idea. I'm glad I was able to hear about it and watch it without sitting through 30 seconds of commercials, or find it buried in a small player at the end of the page. It looks so good up there at the top of the page, prominently displayed for maximum exposure.

Hopefully if you look back on this post tomorrow, you won't have to go through any of that either. Why Baseball's Streaming Technology Is Used By ESPN, CBS Sports And Glenn Beck [Forbes]