Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Dodgers' Fade From Black?

Dodgers fans imagining the television broadcast

With Opening Day only a month away, Steve Dilbeck of the LAT is wondering if Los Angeles television viewers will know it's soon time for Dodger baseball:

The Dodgers’ new network debuts next week, and I guess most of us will just have to take their word for it. Unless you’re with Time Warner Cable, which will run the Dodgers’ new cable station, SportsNet LA. Currently, it doesn’t have a single deal with any other distributor.

The days of watching Dodgers’ games on free television are over. Last year’s games were still split between KCAL-TV Channel 9 and Prime Ticket. But beginning this year, it’s SportsNet LA or nothing.

And currently for the majority of Southern Californians, that means nothing. Now it’s easy to shrug all this off and say this is just the usual dance between a new network and pay-TV distributors. That the pressure isn’t really on to make a deal until the regular season begins March 22 and all will fall into line.

If largely accurate historically, there is still no certainty everything will be resolved by Opening Day. Ask the Pac-12 Network or the Astros, whose network with the Rockets filed for bankruptcy protection after 16 months because it could not reach agreement with DirecTV and other major distributors.

There is obviously a difference between wanting to watch the last-place Astros in Houston and the hugely popular Dodgers in Los Angeles, but you know at some point all this raising of the cable fees is going to reach a limit.

I'm buying MLB.tv Premium, which I know won't avoid blackout restrictions if I'm geographically oriented near Los Angeles, but might be able to help me out otherwise. And at least that way, I don't have to wait for this standoff to reach resoution.

photo swiped from here

10 comments:

Fred's Brim said...

You have to imagine the Comcast deal will only slow any progress TW was making towards any agreements

Cliff Beefpile said...

Guess I'll just have to go to a few more games this year.

Dusty Baker said...

You have to think they'll iron it out.

Right?

Right?

(cries)

Hideo Nomo said...

I'm not expecting a deal during ST. If UVerse follows the pattern they took with the Lakers channel, the Dodgers channel should be live by Opening Day.

karen said...

I can't get ant info on if the shits at TW are even negotiating with anyone. I'm starting to feel pissy and nervous.

If anyone gets any updates, let me know.

#IneedmyDodgers

BJ Killeen said...

I want to organize a protest at the stadium if this doesn't happen. Started a #dodgersfansonstrike hashtag on twitter...

But right now I'm concentrating on getting Kersh as the face of mlb. If you haven't tweeted yet, do it.

#FaceofMLB #ClaytonKershaw

Hideo Nomo said...

My Kershaw Face of MLB tweet from this morning has 27 retweets so far. #DoingOurPart

spank said...

Dammit! And I just put up a brand new 30 ft. antenna.

Neeebs (The Original) said...

You can use the antenna to contact the priests from the Temple of Syrinx.

Scott said...

I read you could use an out of area IP address to bypass the local played games blackouts.