It hasn't happened to the Tribe yet, and it won't in the foreseeable future because of the largesse created by Jacobs Field. The Tribe's 1998 revenue ranked second in all of baseball, an amazing statistic, given the population of Northeast Ohio, that is, the size of the television market. Cleveland is incapable of bringing in big dollars from radio and television rights as do clubs in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia or Boston. It doesn't matter how many times the Indians win 100 games or how many times they play in the World Series or how many All-Star players dot the roster. George Steinbrenner moved to increase his already huge revenue advantage by merging his Yankees with the New Jersey Nets to bargain as a unit for broadcast rights.
Nobody is quite sure.
Tribe officials are waiting to see what happens when the Yankees-Nets combine tries to put the arm on New York stations and cable vendors. But there is speculation that what might work in the Big Apple won't necessarily be successful back in Cleveland. Network stations don't have to take those risks. So the competitive field is limited to the Channel 43, Channel 55 and Fox Sports Ohio, which operates strictly on cable. Fox certainly will buy a chunk of the baseball season.