The victims are the Blazer fans that live within the blackout zone that Comcast DOESN'T serve. It's a huge area, btw. Of course, since you've followed this situation so closely, you understand that issue completely.
Absolutely. But as MickZagger pointed out, there are other ways to receive the games. Each individual company has the right to negotiate separately with Comcast, and many companies have done so and those homes have access to the games.
People here have no idea what the bigger picture is, including Mr. Canzano.
Here it is in a nutshell. I'll just go over the basic skeleton of the situation:
Rupert Murdoch owns DirectTV. He also owns all Fox channels. He tried to buy out Dish Network about 7 years ago and the U.S. Congress forbade him from doing so as too few companies (like the owners of Comcast) have too much control.
You take that idea and you consider the reasons what the motives are when DirectTV and DishNetwork negotiate things.
Currently, there are several cities around the U.S. (Los Angeles, Cincinnati, etc....major cities) who lost their baseball television rights to watch their own teams (the Angels, the REDS, etc..) right during the middle of the pennant chase in the middle of September. Rupert Murdoch and Fox stopped broadcasting games. By doing so, he was attempting to get teams to not use their local cable companies who had Fox broadcasting like Portland has FoxNorthwest and the Mariners and switch to his DirectTV, which had the MLB baseball package.
It's pandering, it's maneuvering, it's high-stakes competition and Rupert Murdoch wants more control.
A similar thing is going on between Dish Network and some local channels, like people experienced here in Portland with ABC, Channel 2 for a while (at least a year, I think). Dish Network is the last medium, other than the internet, that isn't owned by some mega-media Giant like Disney, Murdock, Viacom, the BBC, Gannett, etc.
This "little" squabble of Comcast negotiating their rights to Blazer games for the next few years with DirectTV and DishNetwork is more complicated than people think. Comcast isn't playing hardball. DirectTV and Rupert Murdoch do not want to negotiate a deal. They want to try to make Comcast into "the enemy" and Comcast wants people to switch from DirectTV to Comcast. That's why several small local cable companies have been able to successfully negotiate with Comcast, but DirectTV has not. DirectTV doesn't want to. Comcast doesn't see any of the smaller cable companies as a threat so the negotiations are easier to complete.
DishNetwork and Comcast just haven't been able to come up with the right contract because DishNetwork is the little guy in this, yet they are big when you look at how few people bring this up to their attention compared to their overall clients. It's just not important enough to them based on their clients' feedback.
Again, none of this ever would have happened if 97% of the Blazer fans hadn't abandoned them during the tail-end of the Jail-Blazer days and the early post-Bob Whitsitt era. Fan appreciation dictated this contract, and fans have to live with it. They reap what they sowed.
