Sports Programming Disputes Flare in Summer Battles

Comcast faces a two-front conflict over sports. In one, it is trying to fend off the start-up Big Ten Network, backed by News Corp. and debuting this fall with a slate of college sports programming. Big Ten wants a monthly affiliate fee of $1.10 per subscriber and a spot on Comcast’s expanded basic tier in states home to Big Ten schools. Comcast and other cable operators have complained that Big Ten lacks marquee programming and is not worth the price it seeks.

Comcast’s reluctance to carry Big Ten on those terms can be seen as a preemptive strike against a proliferation of conference-specific networks, a cable industry source said. “Once the Big Ten gets their foothold the other conferences are going to look at this and say, ‘Well why don’t we have an ACC channel?'” the source said. “If everybody took the same strategy -- $1.10 in market and 10 cents out of market -- well, that starts to add up quick… Big cable operators see the picture two and three years down the road where everybody else jumps on board.”

In Comcast’s other battle, the company has lobbied the FCC to rule that the America Channel is not a regional sports network under the Adelphia merger provisions. Long in the works, TAC has been amassing TV rights to various college athletics, and is seeking arbitration for carriage under the Adelphia order.

In another ripple from the Adelphia merger, Mid Atlantic Sports Network, which carries Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles baseball games, wants arbitration with Time Warner Cable systems in North Carolina. This week it leaned harder on Time Warner, as the heads of the state’s nine minor league baseball teams wrote Time Warner Cable President Glenn Britt asking him to end the dispute over MASN’s terms. MASN doesn’t carry their games, but lack of cable carriage for the channel could hurt their teams, they said. “Without a Major League Baseball network available on basic cable, interest in our teams, the support of our sponsors, and the willingness of fans to come out to the ballpark could all diminish.” TWC has offered MASN a spot on a digital sports tier (CD June 13 p13).

Sports networks fear placement on sports tiers because they may lose affiliate fees and ad revenue. Last month, when Comcast moved the Outdoor Channel to its Chicago sports tier, the network told investors it could lose its entire audience in the area.

Meanwhile, a program access dispute between AT&T and Cablevision is emerging just as the rules are to expire. AT&T complained to the FCC in June, saying Cablevision won’t sell sports programming it owns under its Rainbow unit to AT&T’s U-verse service in Connecticut. Cablevision responded in a July 9 FCC filing attacking ATT&T’s ability to ensure that Rainbow programming is delivered to subscribers in a high-quality and secure video signal. AT&T’s service sometimes delivers a “sub-standard” picture, particularly to residences far from AT&T’s fiber node, it said. AT&T broke another carriage contract on its lifeskool and sportskool networks, Cablevision claimed.

And Cablevision scored AT&T for regulatory inconsistency in dubbing itself a multichannel video programming provider (MVPD). “AT&T has repeatedly taken inconsistent positions regarding its regulatory status,” Cablevision said. “It has claimed in various statements and filings in Connecticut that it is not a cable operator for franchising purposes, but is for compulsory license purposes… it has asserted it is an MVPD for some purposes but not for others.”

Sports programming spurs program access complaints because MVPDs view it as a “must have,” said Phoenix Center President Larry Spiwak, who as an FCC staffer helped write the program access rules. “Either you've got the Bears games or you don’t, you've got the Yankees games or you don’t,” he said. “There’s no substitute.”