Time Warner strikes out

The Raleigh News & Observer
by Luke Decock
 
So here we are, two baseball seasons later, still waiting -- and waiting -- for Time Warner Cable to carry MASN.

The Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau last week became the latest government entity to order Time Warner Cable to add MASN, the sports network with the rights to Major League Baseball in this market.

For those keeping score at home, that's two arbitrators and one FCC panel ruling for MASN and against Time Warner. Yet the cable giant has expressed its intent to appeal the ruling yet again.

"We disagree with the Media Bureau's decision and plan to appeal to the full commission," Time Warner's statement read.

And if that fails, what's next for Time Warner? Try to move jurisdiction overseas? Go on a hunger strike?

O.J. Simpson has spent less time in court than the Time Warner legal team fighting MASN. It's a classic example of corporate America keeping poor, hungry New York lawyers out of unemployment lines, because Time Warner is still looking for a leg to stand on when it comes to MASN.

Time Warner has refused to open up an "analog" channel slot -- down there in the low numbers, where you don't need a cable box to get it -- because it claims MASN isn't "local" programming since it carries the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals.

In a sense, Time Warner is right. Though MASN has added some Carolina-based programming, it's still basically a D.C. network and not necessarily "local" to here.

But that's not up to Time Warner to decide. Once Major League Baseball gave this market to the Orioles and Nationals, and once the Orioles and Nationals gave their rights to MASN (the two franchises own the network together), the network became local programming.

That doesn't even address the issue of whether Time Warner discriminated against MASN in hopes of developing its own regional sports programming, which both arbitrators say it did. Meanwhile, Time Warner says it will have to pass on the costs of carrying MASN to its customers. What about its legal fees for the fight not to carry it?

There may indeed be more Atlanta Braves fans in this market than Orioles and Nationals fans combined. That doesn't change anything. This market's television connection to baseball is MASN, like it or lump it. It's time for Time Warner to lump it.