Call it ironic or just Major League Baseball’s taunting way of sticking it to Giants fans in Hawai`i. After two seasons of blacking out the Giants here, MLB has cooperated with the networks and Time Warner Cable in allowing the Giants’ first four games of the season to be shown in the 50th State.
The opening weekend series with the Dodgers was carried on the Oceanic Time Warner cable system using four different network arrangements -- Opening Day (ESPN), Friday (Prime Ticket), Saturday (FOX’s Game of the Week) and today (ESPN’s Sunday Night Game of the Week).
But those and all other Giants games this season (as well as the past two) are not available via streaming at MLB.com and MLB’s At Bat 11 iPhone app. The games are still blocked due to the “home territory” scam and corporate intransigence.
We might be lucky enough to see the Giants on TV again when they play away games with the Dodgers, but they'll be few compared to entire 162-game season we could watch on MLB.com until 2009.
That’s when the suits at MLB decided to black out Internet streaming in deference to the regional sports networks (RSN) that hold the broadcast rights for Giants and A’s games – Comcast Sports Net Bay Area and Comcast Sports Net California respectively.
After years of “negotiations”, the RSNs and Time Warner Cable have failed to reach an agreement to carry Giants and A’s games in Hawai`i. The RSNs say Oceanic Time Warner refuses to pay its price, which Oceanic calls exhorbitant.
As a result, Giants and A’s games have been unavailable on the ‘net and for nearly all broadcast games going into the third consecutive season. MLB just looks the other way, but a more self-serving and sinister motive presumably is governing:
What's MLB's Motive?
MLB condones and even encourages the blackout to rile up Hawai`i fans enough so we’ll pressure Oceanic to cave in on the RSN price. Such a deal undoubtedly would be a financial gain for MLB in some way.
Such would seem to be MLB’s stance based on the letter sent to US Rep. Mazie Hirono late last year by Christopher Tully, the Senior VP for Broadcasting. Read it and see if you can find a hint of concern about the blackout and what it means to the fans.
Mr. Tully has not answered the letter we sent him and posted here on February 17. That enforces our belief that the suits sitting in their Park Avenue offices and VIP suites around the nation’s ballparks think the fans are last in MLB's ranking of priorities when there’s money involved. And ain't it always?
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