For Many Area Fans, Nationals Are Out of Sight

Josh Glassman had just finished his barbecue chicken and was settling in front of the television in his Reston home Tuesday night to watch the Washington Nationals play the Philadelphia Phillies. But when he hit the clicker on his satellite television and turned to Washington's WDCA-20, Glassman found himself watching a show called "Girlfriends."

"I was hoping to get to know my hometown players, but what I got was some show called 'Girlfriends,' " said Glassman, 24, a financial analyst for the federal government. "I'm trying to become a Nationals fan, but it's hard to identify with a team that you don't get to see every day on TV. It's ridiculous that all the games are not available."

The season is less than a month old, and the Washington Nationals still haven't inked the cable and satellite deals that would give them the same presence in the Baltimore-Washington region that the rival Orioles enjoy. So far, the Nationals have been able to place 81 of their 162 games -- Tuesday night's game was not one of those -- in about 2 million households in Washington and its immediate suburbs, leaving gaps like the one Glassman encountered.

Hundreds of thousands of other fans, some within an hour's drive of RFK Stadium, are unable to see the games because they are aren't being picked up by regional sports networks such as Comcast SportsNet, major cable companies and satellite providers beyond the core Washington market. Viewers in outer counties -- Howard, Anne Arundel and Carroll in Maryland, Madison, Louisa, Albemarle and Caroline in Virginia and all of Maryland's Eastern Shore -- are unable to access Nationals games. Comcast SportsNet produces 87 Orioles games reaching 4.7 million homes from Pennsylvania to the North Carolina border. Another 67 Orioles games are televised in the Baltimore area and reach a much smaller number of homes.

The Nationals' 81 televised games are carried on two Washington stations, WDCA-20 and WTTG-5, both owned by Fox. Those ratings have translated to a mere 52,000 households out of the more than 2 million in the Washington television market, the eighth-largest in the country.

The Nationals' television exposure has been stalled by several factors, including a one-of-a-kind arrangement between baseball and the Orioles that gives the fledgling Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) control over the team's television rights; a seven-month negotiation that prevented MASN, to which baseball is contributing $75 million in two installments over the next few years toward the network's infrastructure, from getting up and running until the day before the Nationals played their opener; and a lawsuit by Comcast Corp., whose competing sports network has the capability to carry the Nationals games to the same 4 million-plus households to which it delivers the Orioles.

"We are doing everything we humanly can to put on the games," said MASN chief executive Bob Whitelaw. "People are involved in negotiations with the cable and satellite operators around the clock. These are very complex deals. They don't get done in a day."

There are other ways to watch the Nationals: MLB makes the games available in streaming video on its Web site, for a price, and ESPN and Fox have a few Nationals games planned for their nationwide broadcasts.

A deal is reportedly imminent with satellite system DirecTV, which would expand the Nationals' audience by more than 400,000 households, according to estimates by industry experts. MASN is also in talks with satellite provider Echostar/Dish Network and dozens of other local and regional cable systems, including TimeWarner, Charter Communications, Star Power and Cox.

Even with low ratings, television experts said constant, wide exposure on TV is crucial to the success of any ballclub. But the exposure is even more important for a team such as the Nationals, who are trying to establish a presence in a new city.

"What television does for any team is to give you identity in the market," said Nationals President Tony Tavares. "People who haven't been to games see how much fun people are having at the games. It puts a face on the players and gives people a chance to know them."

Baseball and the Orioles jointly created MASN as a way to preserve the Baltimore club's dominance over the region's baseball television market while also making room for the Nationals. The Orioles own 90 percent of MASN and MLB owns 10 percent, with baseball's share rising to 33 percent over the next three decades. MLB's share of the network will transfer to the Nationals' new owners once MLB sells the team.