Every year since the mass production of television, Americans have been able to watch the Opening Day in the MLB. In recent years, it possible required having cable television to do so, but still accessible to one hundred percent of people. Unfortunately, this year, things have changed.
The Guggenheim Partners whom are the owners of the Dodgers, signed an exclusive contract with Time Warner Cable. Unfortunately over seventy percent of the Southern California market that would be considered the Dodgers regional area, don't have Time Warner Cable. What is worse, is that is many of these cases, the Dodgers fan doesn't have a choice to even switch over to Time Warner cable.
As many people know, cable television distributors sign exclusive contracts with cities in particular, which means you only have one choice to receive your tradition cable in your city. Your only other options would be if you live in an area that can be served by Verizon Fios or AT&T U-Verse (which aren't that many) or if you sign up for satellite cable such as DirecTv or The Dish. Problem is all those other options are also not Time Warner, which means no Dodgers baseball for you.
In signing this contract, a city such as Long Beach, which is the second largest city within Los Angeles County's own limits, doesn't have the ability to even watch the Dodgers baseball. That's approximately 478,000 Los Angeles County residents within one city, who cannot watch Dodgers baseball unless the leave the city and go to a sports bar in a city that does have Time Warner Cable. How ridiculous is that?
This year's Opening Day for baseball was even more special because it was in Sydney, Australia. The MLB Network itself had a countdown clock on the bottom right of their screen and even though it was at 1am Pacific time (Dodgers' time), many fans were willing to stay up late and watch the Dodgers face division rival Diamondbacks. Unfortunately, even though the MLB Network is a subsidiary of Major League Baseball, even they weren't allowed to broadcast the game to non-Time Warner Cable subscribers and instead fans got to watch Intentional Talk with Dan Plesac and Chris Rose, talking about how great Opening Day will be.
When your average fan is denied the chance to watch Opening Day baseball, which even has a petition going around to declare this a holiday, you irreparably hurt your fan base. You can't expect local Southern California kids to grow up and become Dodgers fans if they can't even watch them on television. Best case scenario, these kids will become Angels fans, whom broadcast to the same television market. Worst case scenario, you lose your fans completely, hurting the growth of baseball within the most populated region in the country.
Unfortunately, for the next twenty-five years, this will be the new way of Southern California baseball. Seventy percent of fans won't get the chance to hear Vin Scully's voice announce a game. In a case of irony, even Vin Scully couldn't watch a Dodgers game now. Scully is a resident of Malibu, California, which is covered by Charter Cable. It would appear that if Vin wants to watch Dodgers baseball, he'll have to keep announcing for them no matter what.
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