| Alt Name: | USA Network Thursday Night Baseball ABC's Thursday Night Baseball ESPN Thursday Night Baseball |
| Genre: | Sport |
| Developer: | USA Sports ABC Sports Fox Sports ESPN |
| Starring: | John Smoltz Ken Rosenthal Kevin Burkhardt Adam Amin Joe Davis A. J. Pierzynski Eric Karros |
| Theme Music Composer: | NJJ Music Scott Schreer |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Camera: | Multi-camera |
| Runtime: | 180 minutes (or until game ends) |
| Network: | USA Network ABC Fox Sports Net Fox Family ESPN/ESPN2 |
Thursday Night Baseball is the de facto branding used for live game telecasts of Major League Baseball on Thursday nights.
See main article: USA Network Thursday Night Baseball.
From 1979 to 1983, the USA Network broadcast Major League Baseball games on Thursday nights.
The series began April 26, 1979 with a doubleheader: Cleveland at Kansas City[1] (Jim Woods/Bud Harrelson) followed by Baltimore at California[2] (Monte Moore/Maury Wills). The second game of the night was typically, based out of the West Coast. The games were usually blacked out of the competing teams' cities. Once in a while, when USA did a repeat of the telecast late at night, local cities were allowed to show the rerun.
From 1980 to 1981, Woods and Nelson Briles (replacing Harrelson) did the early games (except for a game at Montreal on October 2, 1980, which reunited Woods with onetime Boston Red Sox radio partner Ned Martin), while Moore and Wes Parker (replacing Wills) called the late game.
In 1982, doubleheaders did not start until June 17. Prior to the doubleheaders starting, Moore and Parker did the individual game until then. When the doubleheaders finally began, Moore and Parker moved over to the late game for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, Eddie Doucette (replacing Jim Woods) and Nelson Briles were assigned to call the early game.
USA continued with the plan of not starting doubleheaders until June in the final year of the package in 1983. Steve Zabriskie and Al Albert filled in for Eddie Doucette in September 1982 (Steve Grad also occasionally substituted) while Albert replaced Doucette for a game or more in 1983.
See main article: Major League Baseball on ABC.
In 1989, the ABC network aired Thursday night Major League Baseball games after having broadcast Monday Night Baseball (and occasional Sunday afternoon games) since 1976.[3] [4] [5] [6] [7] This was ABC's final year of consecutive baseball coverage (alongside NBC, which had telecast Saturday afternoon games since 1966 and Major League Baseball in general since 1947) due to CBS signing a four-year contract (spanning from 1990 to 1993) to become the exclusive national broadcast network provider for Major League Baseball games.
Al Michaels, Jim Palmer, and Tim McCarver formed ABC's lead broadcast team, while Gary Thorne and Joe Morgan were the second team.
See main article: Major League Baseball on Fox Family.
In 1997, as part of the contract with Major League Baseball it had signed the year before, Fox Sports gained an additional outlet for its coverage. Its recently launched network of cable regional sports networks, Fox Sports Net, was given rights to two Thursday night games per week, one for the Eastern and Central time zones and one for the Mountain and Pacific time zones.
In 2000, as part of an exclusive contract Fox signed with MLB, that coverage passed to Fox Family Channel and was reduced to one game per week. After the 2000 season, Fox also gained rights to the entire postseason and moved a large portion of its Division Series coverage to Fox Family. This lasted for one season due to The Walt Disney Company acquiring Fox Family. As part of the transaction, Fox Family was renamed ABC Family and ESPN gained the rights to Fox Family and FX's MLB coverage, although the 2002 Division Series aired on ABC Family due to contractual issues, but with ESPN production, a sign of things to come at ABC Sports. Control of the overall contract remained with Fox, meaning they could renegotiate following the 2006 season and not allow ESPN to retain its postseason coverage. For the 2007 season, Fox did exactly that, and TBS became the other home of the postseason as part of its new baseball contract.
Play-by-play announcers for the FSN/Fox Family coverage included Kenny Albert, Thom Brennaman, Chip Caray, Josh Lewin, and Steve Physioc. Color analysts included Bob Brenly, Kevin Kennedy, Steve Lyons, and Jeff Torborg. Occasionally, FSN would simulcast a local-team feed of a game from one of its affiliated RSNs in lieu of a dedicated national production.
See main article: ESPN Major League Baseball.
ESPN Thursday Night Baseball aired on either ESPN or ESPN2 from 2003 to 2006 and featured one game per week, taking over the package that had been on Fox Family Channel. Castrol served as the presenting sponsor for the telecasts.
The play-by-play commentator was Chris Berman along with either Joe Morgan or Eric Karros as color commentator. In 2006, Duke Castiglione joined the broadcast as the field reporter.
ESPN Thursday Night Baseball ended after the 2006 season because the broadcast rights to the package were lost to TBS. TBS began a package of Sunday afternoon games as a replacement for ESPN's Thursday night games.[8] That package was moved to Tuesday nights in 2022.
Even though Thursday Night Baseball as a distinct package ended after the 2006 season, ESPN has still aired select games on Thursday nights, most notably every year since 2017, when Opening Day of the MLB season was moved to Thursdays, as an evening game on Opening Day remains part of ESPN's baseball contract.[9] [10]
See main article: MLB on Fox and MLB on FS1.
See main article: Baseball Night in America. For the 2019 season, Fox Sports announced that they would air games on two Thursday nights in September.[11] These games were branded as part of Fox's Baseball Night in America package. Four Thursday night games were aired on Fox in a regionalized form, with two each week. The primary games were called by Joe Davis, John Smoltz, and Ken Rosenthal, while the secondary games were called by Kenny Albert, A. J. Pierzynski, and Jon Morosi in 2019.
With the 2020 season being abbreviated to just 60 games due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Fox announced that they would broadcast at least four games on Thursday nights beginning on July 30[12] and continuing through the month of August. Fox aired three weeks of Thursday night games in 2020, with July 30 and August 6 being regionalized, while August 13 was broadcast to the whole country. Fox was supposed to air another week of regional games on August 27, but they were postponed in the wake of player protest after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and instead those games got rescheduled to Saturday, where they aired as part of the Baseball Night in America package.
For the 2021 season, Fox only aired one Thursday night game. The "Field of Dreams Game" between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox.[13]
For the 2022 season, Fox aired three weeks of Thursday night games, The first aired was the Field of Dreams game on August 11, then it aired games in 2 weeks of September to avoid conflicts with the network's college football obligations.
For the 2023 season, Fox aired games on two Thursday night broadcast windows in August and two weeks of Thursday night games in September, once again to avoid college football conflict.
While not weekly, Fox Sports 1 (FS1) has aired baseball on Thursday nights occasionally since 2014. One game was aired on Thursdays in 2014 and 2015, two games in 2016, one game in 2017 and two games in 2018, three games were aired in 2020, three games in 2022 and four games in 2023. FS1 usually airs baseball games on Saturday afternoons.[14]