A June 28 article about the televising of Washington Nationals games incorrectly described the baseball team's ratings on WDCA (Channel 20). While the Baltimore Orioles have had higher ratings than the Nationals in the Washington area when Orioles games are shown on ComcastSportsNet and the Nationals are shown on WDCA, the Orioles have not had a larger audience when their games were on the Pax network. The article also said the Orioles have had higher ratings when they went head to head against the Nationals on television. In fact, the Nationals' opening-day game had higher ratings, and while the Orioles had higher average ratings in nine subsequent head-to-head games, they did not draw a larger audience in every one.
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Nats Caught in a TV Rundown
On many nights, the Nationals can only be watched by subscribers to RCN, a small cable provider, and customers of DirecTV, a satellite service.
(By Jonathan Newton -- The Washington Post)
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"It is a bad deal for the Nationals no matter how you cut it," Gutkowski said. "But he [Angelos] had some leverage and he took advantage of it."
Yet if Angelos has leverage, so does Comcast, which grew from a local suburban Philadelphia cable company to the dominant cable operator in 22 of the top 25 television markets in the country and along the way became a huge player in professional sports. In addition to being the majority owner of a National Basketball Association and a National Hockey League team, Comcast has regional sports networks in Philadelphia, Chicago, Northern California, Baltimore-Washington and, beginning next baseball season, New York.
A few blocks west of City Hall in Philadelphia, work has begun on a $435 million, 57-story skyscraper that will be the tallest in the city and that will serve as headquarters for Comcast Corp. It is a company that is used to getting what it wants with one high-profile exception -- an attempt to swallow up Disney in a $66 billion hostile takeover was fought off by the entertainment and media giant.
"At the end of the day," said David Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast, "the way in which Peter Angelos is being paid off either appropriately or inappropriately, I mean, that is up to Major League Baseball to make a decision whether they need to pay him off legally or under the rules in which they conduct business."
Cohen, a legend in Philadelphia for his role in winning a decisive victory in contract negotiations with the city's municipal unions when he was chief of staff for former mayor Edward G. Rendell, said Comcast did not want to take Angelos to court. "You have to look long and hard to find cases where Comcast is a plaintiff," he said. "I mean, it is not our preferred course of action. Clearly we are a company that likes to resolve things on business-like terms and on a business-like basis and in a largely non-public way . . . so it takes a lot to provoke this company to be a plaintiff in a piece of public litigation."
But once the company filed suit in Montgomery County Circuit Court in May, Cohen said: "The Comcast culture kicks in. I think we have a justifiable reputation as tough, but fair, negotiators and for sticking to our guns if we think we are right and for holding out for the right deal for the right terms. And that is what we are going to do."
Fred Wilpon, chairman and chief executive of the New York Mets, who formed a broadcast partnership with Comcast and Time Warner that takes effect next season, said he is hopeful that MLB -- meaning Selig -- will broker a deal between Comcast and Angelos.
"I think it is in the best interests of everybody that it does get worked out," Wilpon said. "I'm an optimist."
But both the Mets and the Yankees have had their own cable disputes that were resolved only after the intervention of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. The Yankees' dispute was particularly long-lasting and bitter. Cablevision's refusal to carry the Yankees-owned YES Network meant that nearly 3 million subscribers were unable to see Yankee games for the entire 2002 season.
How the Nationals' dispute could be worked out is unclear, though a parallel can be found in Chicago, where Comcast
SportsNet Chicago has the broadcast rights to both the Cubs and the White Sox. The regional sports network was formed last year and televises not only the two baseball teams, but the NHL's Blackhawks and the NBA's Bulls. The network has two channels so that when the two teams are playing at the same time, one game is carried on the "Plus Channel," according to Jack Williams, president of Comcast SportsNet.
Comcast owns a 30 percent equity interest in the network, according to Rudnay, the Comcast spokeswoman. The White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks, along with the Tribune Co., which owns the Cubs, have a combined 70 percent equity in the network.
