As I was thinking about how to piece together the ideas of today's column, I was really struck with a sense of how ultimately petty and inconsequential the topic I was writing about was in the larger scheme of things. With Monday's tragic events fresh in my mind, sports were really put into perspective. If your team loses a game, it will be nothing compared to the loss of life that took place in Blacksburg earlier this week.
I decided against devoting an entire column to the subject because the previous paragraph basically sums up all that needs to be said. Furthermore, there are many more eloquent writers and people with much closer connections to the situation who could do a better job writing such a column that I wouldn't feel right trying to write more than this about it. So with that I will switch gears to a bit of an abbreviated look at my original (and much less important) topic for today.
One of the most frustrating things about being a sports fan is the inability to keep tabs on one's favorite team if you are outside of its television or radio markets. For people who have always lived outside their team's market, have moved away or are currently relocated because of college, the inconvenience is expected. With the advent of satellite television and the Internet, however, there are now ample ways -- in theory -- to avoid missing your team's games.
But what happens when you can't watch a team's games even though you live in the correct market because they are not carried by your cable provider? Such has been the problem for many Washington Nationals fans for the past two seasons. The controversy stems from two disputes: Baltimore Orioles' owner Peter Angelos' opposition to the idea of the Nationals coming to D.C. and the Comcast Corporation's initial refusal to include Mid Atlantic Sports Network in its cable package.
Angelos didn't want the Montreal Expos to move to Washington because he felt it would cut into his market in terms of television and ticket revenue. To appease the Orioles' owner, Major League Baseball allowed Angelos to essentially profit from the Nats by showing the team's games on MASN, a station of which he is the majority owner.
At the time, the Orioles had two years remaining in a 10-year contract with Comcast SportsNet to broadcast Baltimore games exclusively. To keep from losing viewers, Comcast (the primary cable provider in the Mid-Atlantic) refused to include MASN on its package during the last two seasons. I can remember distinctly friends coming over to watch the Nats in their inaugural season because I got MASN on DirecTV and they didn't on cable. Now that the Orioles' contract with Comcast is over, MASN broadcasts both the Orioles and the Nationals.
Though Comcast has finally decided to include MASN in its cable package, many places (including Charlottesville) are still without the channel. So your only ways to see the Nationals or Orioles are to get satellite TV -- not always a viable option for everyone -- or to watch games online. What further complicates the problem is the fact that if you buy a subscription to the website MLB.tv, which according to the site allows you to watch every out-of-market game online, games featuring a team in your market are blacked out. This is because you should be able to watch them on cable television instead.
I don't think there's some conspiracy to keep fans from watching their favorite team, but I still think there are problems with the setup. The Orioles-Nationals-MASN situation is just an example of a conflict that could really be better handled.
If you ask me, it would make sense to offer every single game on MLB.tv, not just out-of-market games. Though I understand regional cable channels that broadcast a local team nearly exclusively (save for the two ESPN and FOX weekly timeslots) do not want to lose viewers, I do not believe that these companies lose much business to MLB.tv. If the game is available on television, I think it's safe to assume that most every fan would rather watch the game on television than on the computer.
Where MLB.tv comes in handy is obviously for watching your favorite team if you are outside that team's market or you just love watching a lot of baseball games (not just following one particular team). Another way that MLB.tv could be useful, however, is if you are in a situation like the MASN controversy, where you live in a certain market but do not have the channels on which games are broadcast, thereby leaving you to miss the games.
While many of the problems that existed with the Nationals and MASN in the previous two years seem to have finally been resolved, the fact that some places (like C'ville) still do not get MASN is still a concern.
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