Baseball Blackouts
Fans Missing MLB Games on Cable Operators Declining Surcharges (Updated)
by Kent Gibbons -- Multichannel News, 4/15/2009 3:11:36 PM
Disputes over regional sports-network surcharges have prevented some fans of the Tampa Bay Rays, Texas Rangers and St. Louis Cardinals from watching their home teams' games on cable in this nascent Major League Baseball season
Fans of the Rangers on Suddenlink in Texas, though, gained access to the games they would have missed after the operator reached a deal announced Wednesday night.
In Florida, Cox, Comcast and Knology haven't yet reached agreement to carry all of the 150 games that are being split evenly between Fox Sports Net's Sun Sports and Fox Sports Net Florida networks. Cox, in Gainesville and Ocala, doesn't have a deal for the games on Sun Sports, while Comcast, in Polk County, doesn't have a FSN Florida deal, according to local reports. Knology doesn't have a deal with Sun Sports for the games involving the Rays, which appeared in the World Series as the American League champions last year, reports say.
Verizon did cut a deal recently to get all the games on both networks, and they also will be shown on Bright House Networks (the dominant cable operator in the Tampa region) and on DirecTV and Dish Network, an FSN representative said.
Mike Giampietro, VP of of operations for Cox in Gainesville and Ocala, told the Gainesville Sun newspaper the decision came down to how much extra Fox would charge after Sun Sports obtained the games. "There would be a certain price added to what Fox charges us every month, so we have to decide, do we add it on to everyone's bill?" he told the paper.
Comcast's Mark Lipford, meanwhile, told The Ledger of Lakeland, Fla., he was "hopefully optimistic" a deal could be reached for the Rays' games.
Other than Knology in Pinellas County and Comcast in Sarasota, the systems that aren't carrying the additional Rays' games on Fox are outside the immediate Tampa area, FSN spokesman Chris Bellitti told Multichannel News. "The good news is that these games are widely available in the teams' home markets. Most of the systems not picking up these games are in the outer markets," he said.
In Texas, Suddenlink hadn't agreed to pay the surcharge for the 50 additional Texas Rangers games that Fox Sports Southwest acquired this year, though they will get 83 games the network already had rights to, the Abilene Reporter-News has reported.
But in a late update, Suddenlink and Fox reached a "mutually acceptable agreement" that will provide the full Rangers schedule on Fox Sports Southwest to its expanded basic customers, starting with Wednesday night's 19-6 victory over the Baltimore Orioles.
FSN Rocky Mountain upped its quantity of Rockies games to 150 games through the 2020 season, up from 126 last year, the newspaper noted. Bresnan originally was going to pass on the games because the surcharge would have to be passed on to customers, the newspaper noted.
Some early St. Louis Cardinals games, on FSN Midwest, also weren't available to some Comcast and Mediacom subscribers in Illinois and Iowa, respectively, the blog The Cardinal Nation reported. The network ramped its game total up to 130 from 110 in 2007, and former incumbent Insight Communications balked at the surcharge and didn't show the extra 20 games the past two seasons, the State Journal-Register in Springfield, Ill., reported. The same holds for Comcast (which acquired the Illinois systems from Insight) this year.
Cox Omaha (Neb.) last week signed an agreement to show 140 Kansas City Royals games this year on Fox's FSN Kansas City after only taking a 100-game package a year ago, the Omaha World-Herald reported. Charter's Nebraska systems continue to take the 100-game package, as do Comcast systems carrying the network in Louisiana and Arkansas, an FSN spokesman said.
A potential loss of Colorado Rockies games on Bresnan Communications systems was resolved before the National League team's home opener on April 10, the Grand Junction (Colo.) Daily Sentinel reported. The Rockies and Liberty Media-owned FSN Rocky Mountain extended their contract to air 150 games through the 2020 season, up from 126 last year.
The additional 24 games were optional to the various cable and satellite companies that carry FSN Rocky Mountain. Originally, Bresnan opted not to pick up the additional games, citing a desire not to pass a surcharge onto its customers.
"We got it all worked out," Sean Hogue, regional VP for Bresnan, told the Daily Sentinel. "Fox Sports made some generous concessions and we started showing the [home opener] game at 2 o'clock."
DirecTV, meanwhile, continues discussions with Comcast SportsNet but continues to show Oakland A's MLB games on CSN California, a representative of the satellite-TV provider said. The talks concern channel placement of CSN California and CSN Bay Area, Mercurynews.com reported.
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