One continuing controversy in the Washington, DC area since the return of the Washington Nationals has been the fact that its not easy to see them on television here. In order to obtain his consent to a team in Washington, Major League Baseball basically gave Baltimore Orioles owner complete control of the Nationals’ media rights. Angelos proceeded to set up a network called the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASM) which televises all Nationals and Orioles games. Because it is a direct competitor to Comcast’s SportsChannel, though, Comcast has so far refused to carry the station.
Lawsuits have been filed and Congressional hearings have been held. And, now, the Federal Communications Commission is getting involved.
Federal regulators yesterday took a step that may help resolve a dispute that has kept Washington Nationals games off the region’s largest cable network.
The Federal Communications Commission gave the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which carries most of the team’s games, the right to demand arbitration as part of its efforts to get on the Comcast Corp. system.
(…)
As described by FCC officials, the process would begin with the arbitrator deciding whether Comcast had discriminated against MASN in refusing to broadcast the games. If so, both sides would put forward their best offers and the arbitrator would pick one in a process known as baseball-style arbitration.
What I don’t understand is this…….if Comcast doesn’t want to carry MASM, or wants compensation of some kind for doing so, then what is wrong with that. If Comcast’s customers don’t like it, they do have other alternatives; satellite television has a pretty decent share of the market around here, and Verizon is on the verge of setting up its own television delivery network.
The one complicating problem, of course, is that Comcast customers don’t have a choice of going to, for example, Cox Communications (which does carry MASM), because Comcast, like most cable companies, has a monopoly on cable services in its geographical area. The solution to that problem, though, isn’t to force Comcast to carry content, its to eliminate the monopoly and let Cox and other cable companies compete for my cable dollars.
The powers-that-be, though, appear to be taking the easy way out.
July 14th, 2006 at 11:40 pm
No, the problem is that Major League Baseball is a legal monopoly and can set up restrictive covenants, cartels and other actions that would be conspiricies in restraint of trade in any other business area. That’s why Comcast can’t cut a deal with competing baseball / broadcasting interests. This legal cover has long outlived its usefulness and hurting baseball in the long run, I think.
August 5th, 2006 at 7:53 am
[...] And what’s even better, they managed to settle it on their own without governmet intervention. [link] [...]