I Ask, Does Anyone Still Care?

Now in its fourth season, there's no end in sight for the Dodgers' TV blackout

There is no end in sight to the dispute between DirecTV and Charter Communications, which inherited the mess when it bought Time Warner Cable. (Charter sells cable service under the Spectrum brand name.)

This is the fourth season of the Dodgers’ television blackout. The team has won the National League West in each of the previous three seasons. Meanwhile the team-owned SportsNet LA channel that carries the games has been unavailable in millions of homes in Southern California that don’t have Spectrum.

How many fans switched to Spectrum in April and May after the 10-game KTLA package?

Charter won’t say.

Charter is pitching Spectrum as the only place to see the Dodgers — “No Spectrum? No Dodgers!” — in its advertising. Are there a lot of Dodgers fans that have not switched?

Yes. The KTLA broadcasts were seen in an average of 105,000 DirecTV households and another 20,000 AT&T U-Verse households — in sum, half again as many households as see an average SportsNet LA broadcast. (AT&T is the parent company of DirecTV.)

Until DirecTV loses a critical mass of subscribers because it does not air the Dodgers, industry analysts say, there is little incentive for the company to pay Charter for the right to carry SportsNet LA.

So none of those Dodgers fans have complained to DirecTV about missing their team on TV?

Sure they have. They might even threaten to switch to Spectrum. But, whether the fans do not actually want to deal with the hassle of changing providers, or whether DirecTV persuades them to stay by giving them free NFL Sunday Ticket or other goodies, the bottom line is that too few have switched to affect DirecTV’s bottom line.

How did the Dodgers get into this mess?

Time Warner Cable agreed to pay the Dodgers a record $8.35 billion over 25 years in exchange for the exclusive right to sell SportsNet LA to other cable and satellite providers. But no carrier besides TWC and Charter agreed to carry SportsNet LA, with DirecTV the most prominent outlet to just say no.

Are the fans stuck with this contract for the next 21 years? Are the Dodgers exploring how they can modify the deal, or walk away from it in search of a deal that would end the blackout?

The Dodgers say it’s premature to conclude this deal doesn’t work if DirecTV won’t negotiate in what the team considers good faith.

(LATimes.com)