Nats Caught in a TV Rundown

Rights to Air Games At Center of Dispute

Because of a legal battle between Orioles owner Peter Angelos and Comcast, many fans are unable to tune in to Nats games. (By Ricky Carioti -- The Washington Post)

There have been times in this inaugural season of the Washington Nationals when Mel Proctor and Ron Darling, the TV voices of the team, have sat in the booth talking into their microphones and thinking this crazy thought: No one out there was watching.

"Well, it was so strange early in the year when we were doing games that nobody was seeing," Proctor said. "That was one of the weirdest things I've ever done. Like this one night I gave out my cell phone number on the air and I said, 'If anybody's watching anywhere, call this number.' And the only one who called was the tape operator from the truck."

By now, they're used to the complaints. "We always ride the Metro back when we're at home," Darling said, "so invariably the question we get all the time is, 'Where are you guys on TV? What channel are you on? Where are you going to be tomorrow?' And literally, we don't have many answers."

A team enjoying surprising success in a city eager to embrace baseball for the first time in 34 years, the Nationals on many nights can be watched on TV only by the 185,000 subscribers to RCN, a small cable provider, and the 1.3 million customers of DirecTV, a satellite subscription service. Millions of other potential viewers are unable to watch the new team because of a dispute between two formidable and now estranged business partners -- Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos and Comcast Corp., the giant communications company that provides cable service to two-thirds of the households in the Washington-Baltimore region.

"You have a first-place team and no penetration in the market," said Bob Gutkowski, CEO of Marketing Group International and former president of Madison Square Garden Network. It is, he said, "a unique situation." And, he might have added, in more ways than one.

Angelos, who fought for years to keep a team out of Washington, controls the TV rights to the Nationals. Granting the Orioles owner the rights to his competitor's games was the price Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig was willing to pay to compensate the famously litigious Angelos for moving the Montreal Expos to Washington. That and guaranteeing Angelos a minimum sale price of $365 million for the Orioles if Angelos decides to sell the team.

With the broadcast rights to the Nationals in hand, Angelos this spring established the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network in partnership with Major League Baseball, which acquired a 10 percent share of the network in return for paying an additional $75 million to Angelos. The Orioles owner then told Comcast that starting in 2007, when the Orioles' contract with Comcast expires, the network would broadcast the games of both teams.

But Comcast SportsNet, which also wanted to broadcast the Nationals, sued the Orioles and MLB, charging it had been denied its contractual right to match any offer from a third party before the Orioles could move to another network. And, since it controlled the main cable system that would distribute MASN, it announced it would not air the Nationals.

"We have always expressed an interest in carrying Nationals games," said D'Arcy Rudnay, a Comcast spokeswoman. "We are not carrying the MASN network because it was created as a result of a breach of contract with Comcast SportsNet."

Following Comcast's lead, Cox Cable, which has about 260,000 subscribers in Northern Virginia, has also refused to carry Nationals games except for those on WDCA Channel 20, the network that carries some games, or those nationally broadcast by Fox and ESPN.

WDCA plans on airing 77 of the team's 162 games this season, with the next one scheduled for Saturday. But that schedule was front-loaded, according to MASN officials, on the assumption that a cable schedule would be worked out by now. That means the station will only air 36 of the Nationals' final 87 games. In addition, WTTG Channel 5 will broadcast three games, according to Sonya Shaw, program manager for the two stations, which are both owned by Fox.

Even when the Nationals' games are televised to the larger audience on Channel 20, they draw lower ratings than the Orioles in the Washington area. When the two teams have gone head-to-head, the Orioles have done better each time.