Tampa-St. Pete Gets a Consolation Prize – Marlins on Tv

You know how they say there’s a thin line between hate and love? Here’s another example: Despite all the Marlin bashing done in the Tampa Bay area ever since Wayne Huizenga planted a baseball cap on his bald head, a station in Tampa has signed on as one of the team’s TV affiliates.

WTMV (Channel 32), an independent station in Tampa that carries a heavy load of sports programming — Notre Dame football, Big East football, Orlando Magic basketball — has contracted to broadcast the full over-the-air allotment of 52 Marlins games being produced by Miami’s Channel 33.

WTMV programming director Joe Pauly said he expects fans to be supportive, despite the area’s bitterness over first losing out to South Florida in the expansion process, then having the deal to move the San Francisco Giants there fall apart.

“Opening Day is coming around, and people like baseball,” Pauly said Wednesday. “Baseball’s different from other sports. It’s not so much the team that people support, but the game.”

There’s a practical reason for the station’s interest in the Marlins. It broadcast more than 100 major league games last summer; with the Marlins now owning the rights to this market, that option was no longer available, leaving WTMV with a lot of air time to fill.

“We’re very, very happy to be there, that’s for sure,” said Dean Jordan, the Marlins’ vice president of communications. “We’re very sensitive to the situation there, and we certainly don’t want to come off acting like we’re gloating.”

Jordan said no deal has been struck with a radio station in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area. “No one’s knocking down our door, either,” he said, though noting there’s a 50,000-watt station in Orlando carrying games that can be heard in the area.

But the Marlins are closing in on a deal, Jordan said, to have their games broadcast on radio stations in Caracas, Santo Domingo and San Juan, three of the largest markets in Latin America. TV rights there are held by Major League Baseball International, but Jordan said he has been lobbying to have as many Marlins games included in the packages as possible.

Stations in West Palm Beach and Pensacola also have contracted to be Marlins TV affiliates.