If it wasn’t bad enough that Major League Baseball had suckered the D.C. government into a deal that will result in taxpayers shouldering the cost of building a new baseball stadium for the Nationals, now it looks like would-be Nationals fans won’t be able to watch the team on television very much this season.
IF YOU thought there weren’t enough Washington Nationals games on television last year, just wait till this season, which begins in a little over a month: There’ll be even fewer games, at least for most fans in the Washington area.
The Nats announced this week a 2006 television schedule that includes just 36 games on over-the-air Channel 20 (WDCA) and seven on Fox Channel 5. Most of the other games will be available through Peter Angelos’s Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), but only to customers of outlets that have agreements with the network. These include RCN Cable, DirectTV, VerizonFIOS and Charter Cable — and definitely do not include Comcast, the cable giant. Comcast is embroiled in a struggle with MASN over broadcast rights to the Baltimore Orioles games and thus has declined to carry Nationals games. Mr. Angelos was granted the rights to both Orioles and Nats games in an effort by his fellow owners to placate him for the reintroduction of baseball to Washington.
Since Comcast is one of the largest cable providers in the D.C. area (the other one being Cox, which is also apparently not included in the deal), this means that most residents of the D.C. area will not be able follow the team on television. How Major League Baseball expects to build a fan base for the team with a sucker deal like this is beyond me.
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