Networks’ testy issue

Those tired of this obsession over Tim Tebow and the Jets can thank Melky Cabrera for testing positive for testosterone and shifting the conversation back to baseball. The Melk Man delivered the topic of performance-enhancing drugs to front burners inside the Valley of the Stupid and other media precincts.

This isn’t exactly how Bud Selig envisioned baseball, even temporarily, stealing the spotlight the National Football League has glommed since training camps opened.

All talk and analysis about how efficient MLB’s testing program is was accompanied by serious questions. Like how many players are now trying to beat the system? Some voices, such as Michael Kay (ESPN-98.7), even demanded the commissioner overturn the result of the All-Star Game, which they declared officially tainted (Cabrera was the game’s MVP).

If all this yapping continues, resulting in even more suspicion, could parts of baseball’s business — specifically its television business — be adversely affected?

Seligula can take some solace in the fact that talk is cheap, much cheaper than the multi-billion dollar television deal he hopes to squeeze out of networks interested in purchasing MLB’s TV rights. Baseball’s current contracts with Fox, ESPN and TBS, worth close to $5 billion, expire following the 2013 season. The commissioner is looking for a significant increase.

Selig and his TV people would rather negotiate a contract without any lingering controversy — the kind of controversy casting aspersions on the integrity of the game. No matter how hard anyone tries to downplay this latest bust, it has opened a legitimate discussion about 1) the risks players are willing to take to beat the system and 2) which masking agents are currently being used allowing players to do just that.

Network suits have been known to use every angle at their disposal to get the best possible deal. Would an executive, running a public company, invest billions in a sport that has a drug-testing procedure in place but still has players going rogue, damaging baseball’s credibility and integrity? Are you laughing yet? Cabrera is not some ham-and-egger jacking up his testosterone level to make it to the big show. As of last week he was a candidate for National League MVP. He also was in the running for the NL batting crown. And Ryan Braun, the reigning NL MVP and the last big name to be caught messing with synthetic testosterone (his suspension was overturned by an arbitrator), is no schlep either.

Who’s next?

That’s a question the TV suits negotiating with MLB might want to consider.

“If all of a sudden guys were dropping left and right, big stars from big teams, it could give you pause (on spending heavily on MLB TV rights),” a network source with a baseball connection said. “But in the long run the sport already survived the worst. It’s a huge stretch to think one positive (drug) test is going to weigh heavily on negotiations that are already going on.”

The other reason network suits will overlook the Cabrera bust, and any concern over performance-enhancing drugs re-emerging as a significant problem for baseball, is the competition between outlets for a share of MLB’s TV package.

Fox, ESPN, and TBS might be concerned Selig is looking to change the makeup of the current packages and give some of what the incumbents have to another network. It’s no secret NBC is interested in getting a slice of baseball’s TV pie to put on its cable-based NBC Sports Network. While the Olympics brought increased recognition and added eyeballs to NBCSN, its roster of sports, which includes the NHL, is something to be easily ignored.

Baseball could change that, big time. So, as a matter of business, it’s doubtful any NBC executives are going to perceive baseball’s PED situation as some sort of red flag. Their business, turning NBCSN into a profitable sports network, comes first.

This is just the way it is. The NFL has had its share of drunk drivers, drug dealers and gun-toting, miscreant thugs. Still, the networks fight among each other for the right to see who is going to bestow the most cash on the NFL for the right to air its games.

Then, their hired mouthpieces — whether they be Bob Costas or Cris Collinsworth or Tom Jackson — deplore the acts of the NFL’s latest bad actor. But they leave it to your imagination to figure out why the companies they work for bankroll sports leagues that routinely employ deviants and make them millionaires in the process.

So yeah, Melky Cabrera putting baseball under another cloud of suspicion won’t be a blip on these TV negotiations. That does not mean that during the course of the new contract there won’t be more positive tests, more stars suspended and a deterioration of the product.

Buyer beware.