<small><sup>1</sup>ABC owned television station.</small>
<small><sup>2</sup>CBS owned television station.</small>
<small><sup>3</sup>Fox owned television station.</small>
<small><sup>4</sup>NBC owned television station.</small>
<small><sup>5</sup>Superstation (bold indicates former superstation).</small>
When the League Championship Series was first instituted in 1969, the Major League Baseball television contract at the time allowed a local TV station in the market of each competing team to also carry the LCS games. So, for example, Mets fans in New York could choose to watch either the NBC telecast or Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy and Ralph Kiner on WOR-TV.
1983 marked the last time that local telecasts of League Championship Series games were allowed. In 1982, Major League Baseball recognized a problem with this due to the emergence of cable superstations such as WTBS in Atlanta and WGN-TV in Chicago. When TBS tried to petition for the right to do a "local" Braves broadcast of the 1982 NLCS, Major League Baseball got a Philadelphia federal court to ban them on the grounds that as a cable superstation, TBS could not have a nationwide telecast competing with ABC's.
Since 2007, MLB playoff games on TBS are not made available to local over-the-air broadcasters in the participating teams' markets. Under the previous contract, ESPN was required to make those games available on the air in local markets. As of 2023, Major League Baseball is currently the only "Big Four" league with regional broadcast rights whose entire postseason is exclusive to national television; the National Basketball Association playoffs and National Hockey League playoffs continue to air their first round games on both national and local television.