Congrats to the Giants, NL West Champions; SF Is Creating a Dynasty, but it Goes Unseen in Hawaii; Almost Forgot: Giants Took Care of WS Business!

What a year 2012 has been for Hawaii’s favorite MLB team, the San Francisco Giants. Matt Cain throws a Perfect Game; Barry Zito rebounds for his best season as a Giant; Buster Posey is favored to win MVP honors, and a handful of late-season additions produced winning streaks that built an 11-game lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers with only 10 to play. That spells DIVISION CHAMPIONSHIP!

Newly situated in Sacramento after our permanent move from Honolulu, we have the luxury of watching the Giants on Comcast’s cable system any time we want. Attending the games is easy, too, if you’re willing to pay the scratch via StubHub for good tickets. We had two nice ones in early September  for a Dodgers-Giants game (that's Posey legging out a double in the photo).

But the games are STILL BLACKED OUT IN HAWAII! It’s a travesty that Giants fans in the islands are suffering – corporate and MLB indifference to a blackout solely because Hawaii is considered to be in the Giants’ “home TV territory.” What a joke.

So enjoy the Playoffs while you can, Hawaii friends. If the 2010 season is a guide, you’ll be able to watch all Division, League and World Series games, and we hope the Giants are winners of the final baseball game of the year in early November. But unless the suits can reach an agreement over the winter, you’ll be back in Giants Blackout Hell come 2013. 

When you fill out your Christmas Gift List for Santa, ask him to drop off some compassion for Giants fans when he visits their homes around Hawaii. And you know what he can leave the executives at Comcast, Time-Warner and MLB – that proverbial lump of coal.

Sports Columnist Rips Giants for Tolerating TV Blackout in Hawaii, and That’s Really Bad PR

The San Francisco Giants organization is a pretty thick-skinned bunch. They’ve shown no aloha whatsoever for their loyal fans in Hawaii as they tolerate the Infamous MLB Blackout of their games in the state.

Honolulu Star-Advertiser sports columnist Ferd Lewis calls out the Giants suits today, and although the newspaper has installed a pretty impenetrable firewall to keep non-subscribers out, we don’t think they'll mind if we quote Ferd’s column in its entirety today. After all, “it’s for the good of the game.”

Giants get their jollies holding Hawaii hostage

By Ferd Lewis
POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Jul 03, 2012

For San Francisco Giants fans in Hawaii, the team's first-place success can be a little bittersweet these days.

That's when it isn't just plain head-banging maddening.

While they relish the Giants' standing atop the National League West Division and what it might portend for this season, they say there is the continuing disappointment with not being able to see much of it firsthand.

We're going on four years now of Major League Baseball's curious blackout, one that has Hawaii fans caught in a rundown between the clubs' greed and the inflexibility to work out deals with cable partners.

This notion that Hawaii is "home television territory" for the Giants, some 2,500 miles distant and therefore subject to blackout, would almost be funny if it hadn't been so ham-handedly drawn up and tight-fistedly enforced.

It is one thing to black out Giants' home games in Northern or Central California, where fans are within driving — or rail — distance of AT&T Park. It is quite another to impose it on the 50th State, where the commute is more arduous.

The shakedown works like this: MLB teams are allowed to declare "home television territories" that need not be based on any geographic common sense. Profit motive is enough. Which is why at various times as many as six teams — Giants, A's, Angels, Dodgers, Padres and Mariners — have all staked their claim to these islands.

Not to actually play any games here, you understand, but to strong-arm local fans and their cable operators to sign on and pay up or forgo the opportunity to watch them on a regular basis.

Unless local cable operators come to terms with the team's designated regional sports network, there is a blackout of non-ESPN national games and DirecTV. In this, even subscribers to MLB.com, MLB Extra Innings and others outlets have found themselves in the dark.

Some clubs, the Mariners and Padres, for instance, have relented and granted so-called "temporary waivers." Others, such as the Dodgers and Angels, have managed to work out deals with Oceanic Time Warner Cable.

Meanwhile, the Giants have dug in the way Willie McCovey once did and aren't budging. Even testimony to the Federal Communications Commission in Washington and a letter from some concerned U. S. senators earlier this year have yet to back the Giants away from the plate.

Which is why fans here didn't get to see Matt Cain's perfect game until the final innings, when ESPN and others finally cut in.

Give KITV's MeTV Hawaii, available on digital cable Ch. 126, credit for bringing in a 12-game package. But that still leaves more than 90 percent of the Giants games up to the whims of the TV market. At least fans can catch their team on the radio on KKEA, 1420-AM.

Giants fan and rail public relations operative Doug Carlson was so enraged he started a blog dedicated to the blackout, www.commaaina.blogspot.com.

When that didn't work, Carlson took perhaps the ultimate step: He moved to Sacramento. "I can't say the Infamous MLB Blackout of Hawaii was all of the motivation, but it definitely was a sweet part of the transition," Carlson wrote in an email.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com.

PERFECTION!!!

MATT CAIN pitches the first perfect game tonight in Giants franchise history! What a thrill to watch it on television -- in California. Unfortunately, Giants fans in the 50th State didn't see the game. The Giants and most other West Coast teams are blacked out in Hawaii for reasons described in the posts below.

MLB Hawaii Blackout Continues; Giants Fans Move to Sacramento, Can Now Watch Every Game

Angel Pagan stretches to snag liner into left-center at AT&T Park today.

It's Saturday afternoon, the Giants are beating Texas 5 to 1 in the 8th and the game is on TV -- just like last night's game was and tomorrow's will be. We're watching it, which means we aren't in Honolulu anymore. We're in Sacramento, which is in the Giants' home television territory. So is Honolulu, but Honolulu is virtually blacked out from viewing West Coast baseball. 

The suits who control the rights and the local cable system(s) in NorCal have made deals that allow Giants fans here the enjoyment of watching their favorite team. That hasn't happened among the executives at Time-Warner Cable in Hawaii and those who own the broadcast rights for four of the six West Coast MLB teams -- Giants, A's, Mariners and Padres. Fans of those teams are out of luck, and so are fans of their opponents. Only a handful of those games are available in Hawaii on the dominate cable systems in the state.

The suits -- including those in MLB headquarters -- have allowed this blackout to continue into a fourth straight season, and there's no sign of a deal to let Hawaii pass GO.  THIS is in the best interests of the game?  

Here's a New Rule we can live with: 

"Major League Baseball teams are prohibited from claiming a community as 'Home Television Territory' if it's outside a 154.5-mile radius from the team's ballpark."

That's the straight-line distance from the middle of AT&T Park to the nearest point on the California-Nevada border -- which happens to be in the middle of Lake Tahoe (the lake itself) where the border turns north after its long diagonal sweep.  Everything beyond the green circle below is a reasonably long slog-of-a-drive to the park, so all communities outside the circle should be considered beyond the Giants' home TV territory. That would mean fans in those communities -- including Hawaii, obviously -- could watch games streamed on MLB.com even if there's no deal among cable and TV executives.

So how 'bout it, MLB? Get out your map and start drawing your own circles. End the Blackout!

Happy Ending of Giants’ 1-0 Win over Phillies:

What a Tease; Blackout of Coast Teams Means It
Was 1 of Only 17 SF Games on HI TV in 2012

At least the wait was worth it, but the classic pitchers’ duel (Matt Cain, 2 hits, no runs in 9 innings) and walk-off RBI in the 11th makes the blackout seem all the crueler. THAT’s the kind of Bay Area baseball Hawaii fans are denied watching due to the incomprehensible ruling by Major League Baseball that Hawaii is in the “home television territory” of the Giants, A’s, Padres, and Mariners. We’re still banking on the group of United States senators putting an anti-trust fear into Selig and Company.

Cain Throws Gem in Home Opener, but We Didn’t See It in Honolulu, 2,387 Miles from San Francisco; We’re in the Giants’ ‘Home TV Territory’ – IYCBI

Matt Cain had a perfect game through 6.2 innings in his 1-hitter.

If You Can Believe It, baseball fans in Hawaii have started a fourth season of "prevention baseball" -- prevented from watching nearly all games played by West Coast baseball teams and their opponents. Are you playing attention, Red Sox fans? The state out here in the middle of the Pacific is designated as in the home TV territory of covetous TV rights holders for the West Coast teams.

Comcast blames Time-Warner for not making the Giants and A’s games available, and Time-Warner says Comcast wants too much money. The Giants organization shrugs, and Major League Baseball says nothing about it at all.

For several years through the 2008 season, the best way to end the work day was to pull out the laptop, head for the lanai and watch the Giants game begin in Pac Bell Park at pau hana and cocktail time in Honolulu. That ended without warning at the start of the 2009 season, and despite dozens of complaints and inquiries since then by baseball fans throughout Hawaii, nobody inside baseball is showing even a smidgen of interest in ending the blackout.

Can DKI Fix It?

Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii has been a member of Congress since Statehood in 1959. The senator has “delivered” time and again for this isolated and often overlooked state, and some say he saves on travel expenses by walking instead of flying to the mainland.

Senator Dan is one of several senators looking into the blackout, and we’re putting our faith in them to wake up Bud Selig and the rest of the profiteers who seemingly have forgotten the fans.

So until the suits get out of the way and let us subscribe to MLB.com again to watch Giants games as they’re streamed “live,” the only action we’ll see is on SportsCenter and video replays at SFGiants.com, including Matt Cain’s 1-hitter today, and that sucks.

4th Blacked-Out Season Begins; Giants Are on HawTel’s Digital Service, but Not Time-Warner’s System; Does MLB Leadership Care about Fans?

What we're supposed to be watching today -- but aren't.

The madness continues. The insult to baseball fans continues. The indifference to “the good of the game” continues, and so does the greed.

For the fourth straight year, Major League Baseball is condoning the refusal of Time-Warner Cable (dba Oceanic in Hawaii) and various broadcast baseball rights owners on the West Coast to cut a deal that will allow Giants, A’s, Mariners and Padres games to be carried in Hawaii.

Deals can be done. The Dodgers and Angels games are frequently on Oceanic’s Fox SportsNet West channel, so the questions also continue. Honolulu's KITV, owned by Hearst, is carrying 17 games this season, as it did last year. HawaiianTelcom has the Giants game on its digital service this afternoon.  What’s holding up a deal to allow cable coverage of the affected teams? And do the suits in MLB’s executive suites give a rip?

Time-Warner and Comcast blame each other. T-W says Comcast wants too much money, and Comcast simply says T-W Oceanic “has opted not to make…our Giants coverage available to their customers.” Local fans have repeatedly contacted those companies plus the Giants organization, the Federal Communications Commission and MLB’s headquarters, and they've either brushed us off or haven't bothered to waste a stamp.

Sports columnists Ferd Lewis of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle have written to condemn the blackout, and Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii is one of a group of Democratic senators who are urging the FCC to end the blackouts. Said Inouye in a statement:

"Professional sports fans in Hawaii are at a significant disadvantage geographically and economically because unless their teams are on TV they have to expend significant time and resources to travel to watch them play. The fans are the lifeblood of these sports franchises and they should be able to watch their favorite teams play regardless of what state they live in. I would urge the FCC to take another look at sports blackouts and to think of the fans who want nothing more than to cheer their team to victory while promoting the franchise and expanding its base of support."

A New Indignity

Instead of watching the Giants-Diamondbacks game today we’re listening to the MLB.com audio feed, and there’s something new this season: After every half inning, the feed pushes an obnoxious 10-second audio commercial that “shouts” at the listener on top of the KNBR radio feed. It comes out of nowhere and is completely unacceptable. That’s what we’ve told the Support staff via a message on the website. We’ll see if they care to do anything about it. April 7 Update: Here's MLB.com's response: "Please forward your inquiry or comments directly to the team, as they are better suited to respond." That's totally unhelpful, of course, because the audio streaming platform is run by MLB, not the Giants. Why would the Giants cut into the stream with the 10-second commercial and step on KNBR's broadcast? They wouldn't, so it's a typical side-stepping response from MLB. Let's see what Support's response is to our second message. 

Finally….

In addition to everything else, there’s something additionally wrong about blacking out video coverage of the Giants and other West Coast teams on MLB.com in Hawaii. Internet streaming and cable TV are different channels and technologies. Does Comcast think the Internet is competition? The MLB has meekly acquiesced to the streaming blackout, too.

We really don’t know any details of MLB’s position on the blackout because the Commissioner’s office, including Bud Selig, has refused to respond to letters.

Maybe they’ll respond to Senators Inouye, Richard Blumenthal (CN), Sherrod Brown (OH), Frank Lautenberg (NJ and Debbie Stabenow (MI).