Courtesy Miami Herald

(April 3, 2009) We'll start with the good news: Fox Sports Florida and Sun Sports announced that, for the first time in memory, every Marlins road game will be televised. Now the bad news: Two of the Panthers' final five games will not be televised locally, even with the team finally in a playoff race.

FS-Florida will carry a Florida-Vanderbilt baseball game Friday instead of Atlanta's game at the Panthers. And Tuesday's Panthers game at Philadelphia will not be televised because FS-Florida has a Marlins game and Sun Sports has a Heat game.

Neither Friday's nor Tuesday's games were included in the Panthers' 65-game TV package. The Panthers said they spoke to FS-Florida about adding the games, but the network declined, citing programming conflicts and the lack of an available alternate channel.

Both games will be on the NHL's pay-per-view Center Ice package, which is carried by some local sports bars but isn't available for purchase on a per-game basis.

There will be 155 Marlins games televised this season, though five Marlins-Tampa Bay games will be Rays-produced telecasts. The only seven games not on TV will be 6 p.m. Saturday starts at Dolphin Stadium (including April 11 vs. the Mets). Those seven cannot be broadcast because they fall inside the last hour of Fox Network's exclusive window.