By Joe Flint
January
21, 2013, 12:08 p.m.
Get ready, Angelenos,
another regional sports network may be headed your way!
Time Warner Cable is
in advanced talks with the Dodgers for a deal involving the storied franchise's
television rights. According to the Los Angeles Times, Time Warner Cable is
prepared to pay upward of $7 billion for the right to be in business with the
Dodgers for the foreseeable future. A contract could be announced as early as
later this week. This would be the biggest local sports contract in television
history.
Currently, Dodger games can
be seen on News Corp.'s Prime
Ticket channel. But that deal expires at the end of the 2013 baseball season.
While News Corp. is still in the hunt, right now it appears that Time Warner
Cable has the lead heading into the ninth inning of negotiations with the
team's new majority owner, Guggenheim Partners.
Although Time Warner Cable
also has a Los Angeles sports outlet (SportsNet), which is home to the Lakers and
has plenty of room to accommodate the boys in blue, the Dodgers are hot for
their own channel that they would control. Given that Guggenheim spent $2.15
billion for the team, that's hardly a surprise. It is banking on TV money to
justify that cost and if it can own the channel too, that's more potential
gravy.
If the Dodgers do end up with their own network, with either Time
Warner Cable or News Corp. as a partner, it would add to the glut of so-called
regional sports networks eating up space on televisions here. Besides Prime
Ticket and SportsNet, there is also News Corp.'s Fox Sports West
and Time Warner Cable's Spanish sports network Deportes. On top of that, there
are also two cable channels devoted to the Pac-12 college conference.
Should Prime Ticket lose
the Dodgers, don't expect News Corp. to take the other sports content from that
channel (which includes rights to the Clippers)
and put it on Fox Sports West. Programmers are loathe to give up real estate
and News Corp. will try to make the case that there is enough compelling
content on Prime Ticket without the Dodgers to justify keeping it afloat.
Distributors will try to push for News Corp. to lower the cost to carry the
channel. According to consulting firm SNL Kagan, Prime Ticket currently
gets more than $2.50 a subscriber, per month from pay-TV
distributors.
Even if a new channel isn't
created for the Dodgers, it is hard to see how such an agreement won't drive up
cable bills. The Dodger pact may be the tipping point where consumers and
lawmakers say enough is enough. Sports costs are dramatically driving up the
cost of pay TV. Sports programming may be popular, but non-sports fans are
increasingly being asked to pick up most of the tab. The push to sell sports
channels on a separate or a la carte basis to those who want them will
grow along with those cable bills.
Should Time Warner Cable
get the Dodgers, News Corp. executives will privately grumble that it is the
cable operator's fault that bills are going up. Make no mistake, whoever gets
the Dodgers is going to pass along that cost to the consumer. A real win for
the fans would be if both companies looked Guggenheim in the eye and said,
"No, thanks."
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-dodgers-twcable-20130121,0,2201738.story
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