TV services provide less than die-hards would like

By Aaron Nathans, The News Journal

He’s a die-hard Philadelphia sports fan, and loves watching football games from around the nation.

Robert Cox can watch the Phillies or his choice of Sunday football games … but not both.

A Middletown resident, he’s a subscriber to DirecTV, a satellite service that offers NFL Sunday Ticket.

But DirecTV doesn’t have a contract with Comcast to carry most Philadelphia sports games, including the Phillies, Flyers and 76ers.

“It is absolutely ridiculous,” Cox wrote in an e-mail to The News Journal. “I have called DT probably 10 times over the last couple of years and I keep hearing the same answer: ‘Talk to your local representative or congressman.’ ”

When it comes to sports television in Delaware, you can’t have it all. But depending on your pay-TV operator, and how much you have to spend, you might get your top priority.

Most Phillies games are covered by one of Comcast’s two local stations: Comcast SportsNet, or, less frequently, The Comcast Network, formerly CN8.

Subscribers to Comcast’s digital starter tier get both stations. Verizon FioS customers used to get only Comcast SportsNet, but missed out on games broadcast on The Comcast Network.

But as of this month, Verizon customers get both, after Verizon negotiated a new contract with Comcast.

FioS, of course, isn’t available everywhere, but it is now up and running in Cox’s area. In order to switch, Cox said he’d have to pay to get out of his DirecTV contract. And he’d lose access to the NFL Ticket, which is available exclusively on DirecTV at a premium of $315 a year.

Cox said he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. It would cost a lot of money to switch, but personally, “the cost of losing the Ticket may ultimately be more to me,” he wrote.

For DirecTV customers in this region, their assigned home baseball team is the Baltimore Orioles, as well as other teams from the Washington-Baltimore market, broadcast over Comcast’s Mid-Atlantic stations.

“Comcast uses a loophole in the law to withhold that from us,” said Robert Mercer, of DirecTV, referring to the Phillies.

Once upon a time, most cable networks distributed their content by satellite. A 1992 FCC ruling stated that such original programming needed to be made available for purchase by competing pay-TV providers.

But the rule covered only satellite transmissions, not “terrestrial” distribution. As technology changed and cable and fiber-optics became the transmission method of choice, companies like Comcast were able to use that exemption to keep from sharing content, said Andrew Schwartzman of the Media Access Project in Washington.

His group has been working to get the loophole closed. And the FCC did just that in a 4-1 January ruling. But Cablevision appealed the decision in court.

The FCC decision hasn’t taken effect yet. So for the time being, most of Comcast’s Philly pro sports broadcasts are not available to other pay-TV services, unless Comcast has determined it’s in its economic interest to sell, Schwartzman said.

Comcast’s Jeff Alexander noted that his company has made The Comcast Network — Comcast’s secondary Philly sports station — available to its competitors. Neither DirecTV nor the Dish Network have made this available. Dish Network officials did not respond to inquiries.

For DirecTV customers, there is a way around the problem, although it’ll cost you. To get the most Phillies games on DirecTV, you’ll have to sign up for MLB Extra Innings, which, for $212 a year, offers up to 80 games a week. This service is also available through Comcast and Verizon.

Fans can also go looking for their team, or sport, of choice among the network bundles offered by pay-TV stations. For instance, a Delaware FioS customer can get New York Yankees games on the YES network as part of the FioS Ultimate HD lineup, which, as a stand-alone service, sells for $89.99, or $25 more per month than Verizon’s basic TV service.

Subscribers to FioS Ultimate HD also get the Tennis Channel, the CBS College Sports Network, Blackbelt TV, the World Fishing Network, and a bunch more.

Comcast customers can add on a Sports Entertainment Pack for $6.95 a month and gain access to a large amount of sports programming, ranging from the single-station MLB Network and NFL Network to CBS College Sports.

Services like this provide a lot more content than a customer actually wants, said Barry Orton, professor of telecommunications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The cable industry has based its entire business plan on selling bundles, Orton said. If customers were allowed to pick and choose the stations they wanted to buy, “we’d buy and watch a whole lot less, and I think they know that,” Orton said.

Lee Gierczynski, manager of media relations for Verizon, said bundling serves a purpose.

“Bundling these packages of channels together is more cost-effective because it leads to a lot more diversity of programming. Many of these channels wouldn’t be able to survive on their own,” Gierczynski said.