Baseball
Agreement Expands Nats' TV Coverage
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Washington Nationals games will expand to another 185,000 television households throughout the Washington area under an agreement reached yesterday between cable provider RCN and the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which controls baseball television rights in the region.
RCN will air 60 Nationals games on a MASN channel, starting with last night's game at RFK Stadium against the Milwaukee Brewers. The cable provider already carries 79 Nationals games over the air on WDCA Channel 20 and WTTG Channel 5, according to RCN and MASN spokesmen.
RCN has 185,000 customers in the District, southern Montgomery County, Gaithersburg and the city of Falls Church, according to a spokesman.
Satellite television provider DirecTV has a deal to broadcast 135 Nationals games this season, which includes a MASN channel as well as games on WDCA, WTTG and ESPN. DirecTV has 1.3 million subscribers in the Baltimore-Washington region, according to a DirecTV spokesman.
Although the number of television households receiving Nationals games has expanded since the season started, MASN has yet to sign a deal with cable giant Comcast, which could deliver Nationals games to millions more households throughout the region.
Comcast last month filed a suit against the Baltimore Orioles, MASN and Major League Baseball over Comcast's right to televise Orioles games. Comcast SportsNet owns the rights to televise about 80 Orioles games a year through 2006, and it has sued to prevent baseball and the Orioles from taking those games to MASN without giving Comcast a chance to match the offer.
In the meantime, Comcast will not carry MASN on its channels, although Comcast is carrying Nationals games on its WTTG and WDCA channels.
-- Thomas Heath
