Hollywood Breakdown
Dodgers Doing Great on the Field, Still Troubled on TV
Most Angelenos still can't watch their hometown baseball team on television because Time Warner Cable hasn't been able to sell the Dodgers channel SportsNet LA to other distributors.
As baseball season marches on, big television distributors continue to battle, keeping the Dodgers off the television sets of about 70% of Angelenos. The dispute centers around the Dodgers-owned channel SportsNet LA. Time Warner Cable agreed to distribute the channel for the next 25 years, at the cost of $8.3 billion. But distributors like DirecTV and Dish Network don't want to pay to carry the channel, which would cost about $5 per subscriber. Now, Time Warner Cable is encouraging an arbitrator to step in and come to a solution, but those other distributors are not interested in dealing with a third party.