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The ugliness of the Dodgers' TV mess
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/10-degrees--the-ugliness-of-the-dodgers--tv-mess-031743146-mlb.htmlFor the second straight season, the highest-paid baseball team in history can’t be seen legally by more than 70 percent of its viewing audience, and everyone involved seems more than content to let the impasse fester on. Every last bit of it reeks of greed from Time Warner Cable, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Major League Baseball, who have skipped past the stage of caring about the team’s fans and sequestered themselves inside a bubble where this is still a fight worth fighting.
It must be lonely in there. Because the inevitability of change, of admitting this is a lost cause that needs to be remedied, grows more evident by the day. Time Warner promised $8.3 billion for 25 years of local TV rights for the Dodgers. It was a ridiculous overpay that forced an ask of around $5 a month from other Los Angeles-area pay-TV providers to carry SportsNet LA, the network that broadcasts the Dodgers. Every satellite and cable provider refused.
Gridlock ensued, the sort that even for an Angeleno looked ugly. The calculus was simple: Time Warner wants an over-market price for a product whose customers don’t demand it enough to warrant that. Lowering the price would worsen what’s already a disastrous investment, with reported $100 million-plus annual losses for Time Warner.
MLB is standing by Time Warner for now, kind enough to run a propaganda website called I Need My Dodgers. Rather than take a stand against such systematic blacking out, MLB prefers to protect the sanctity of its lucrative local-TV deals, an understandable position if the league’s prime motivation at this point weren’t growing the game. Shutting out more than two-thirds of fans in the second-biggest TV market in the country with an eminently marketable, interesting, enjoyable team isn’t just counterintuitive. It’s puzzling.
It must be lonely in there. Because the inevitability of change, of admitting this is a lost cause that needs to be remedied, grows more evident by the day. Time Warner promised $8.3 billion for 25 years of local TV rights for the Dodgers. It was a ridiculous overpay that forced an ask of around $5 a month from other Los Angeles-area pay-TV providers to carry SportsNet LA, the network that broadcasts the Dodgers. Every satellite and cable provider refused.
Gridlock ensued, the sort that even for an Angeleno looked ugly. The calculus was simple: Time Warner wants an over-market price for a product whose customers don’t demand it enough to warrant that. Lowering the price would worsen what’s already a disastrous investment, with reported $100 million-plus annual losses for Time Warner.
MLB is standing by Time Warner for now, kind enough to run a propaganda website called I Need My Dodgers. Rather than take a stand against such systematic blacking out, MLB prefers to protect the sanctity of its lucrative local-TV deals, an understandable position if the league’s prime motivation at this point weren’t growing the game. Shutting out more than two-thirds of fans in the second-biggest TV market in the country with an eminently marketable, interesting, enjoyable team isn’t just counterintuitive. It’s puzzling.
One, two, three, AWWWWW!!!
Will someone please call them a
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