In 2021, Major League Baseball TV rights are sold for many millions (or even billions!) of dollars and zealously guarded by rightsholders. In some cases it’s even difficult for fans to watch their team’s games because TV channels can’t reach carriage deals with providers.
That wasn’t the case in the early days of television. With only a few broadcast channels on the air and lots of time to fill, many channels looked to live sports, including baseball, as a way to fill several hours of airtime for many summer afternoons and evenings.
The result, at least in Chicago, was Cubs games being carried on multiple TV channels at once.