--- title: TELEVISION: Keeping Its Eye On the Ball description: Keeping Its Eye On the Ball canonical: https://time.com/archive/6701444/television-keeping-its-eye-on-the-ball/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 1988-12-26T05:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-27T18:11:28.571Z article:section: U.S. og:title: TELEVISION: Keeping Its Eye On the Ball og:description: Keeping Its Eye On the Ball og:url: https://time.com/archive/6701444/television-keeping-its-eye-on-the-ball/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: TELEVISION: Keeping Its Eye On the Ball twitter:description: Keeping Its Eye On the Ball twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [U.S.](/section/us/) # TELEVISION: Keeping Its Eye On the Ball by [TIME](/author/time/) Dec 26, 1988 5:00 AM CUT by [TIME](/author/time/) Dec 26, 1988 5:00 AM CUT Faithful viewers of CBS may soon take its initials to mean Clobbered By Sports. The No. 3-ranked network already holds rights to National Football League and National Basketball Association games. Last week CBS offered $1.1 billion to win a bidding war for the priciest TV sports contract ever: a four- year pro-baseball package that will include the World Series, the league championships, the All-Star game and twelve regular-season contests. That works out to a maximum of 136 games over the four-year span, or a heady $8 million per event. The odds-on candidate for announcing duties: Brent Musburger. CBS hopes its rights to the pennant games and the fall classic will deliver an audience that can be regaled with the network’s new prime-time programming, which badly needs bucking up. Last week CBS canceled four of its eight new prime-time shows because of poor ratings. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6701444/television-keeping-its-eye-on-the-ball/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6701444/television-keeping-its-eye-on-the-ball/"},"headline":"TELEVISION: Keeping Its Eye On the Ball","datePublished":"1988-12-26T05:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-27T18:11:28.571Z","description":"Keeping Its Eye On the Ball","url":"https://time.com/archive/6701444/television-keeping-its-eye-on-the-ball/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME","url":"https://time.com/author/time/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6701444/television-keeping-its-eye-on-the-ball/","name":"TELEVISION: Keeping Its Eye On the Ball"}}]}] ```