The 300,000 Charter Communications cable subscribers in Southern California will have access to the Dodgers’ SportsNet LA channel beginning Tuesday at no additional charge, the company and team announced Thursday.
The move, an about-face spurred by merger talks, also allows residents in Charter coverage areas who have DirecTV, Dish, AT&T U-Verse or Verizon FIOS to change providers if they want access to the Dodgers-owned channel, which launched in February 2014 and has only been available to Time Warner Cable subscribers as well as a small pocket of Bright House and Champion Broadband in the San Gabriel Valley.
The bulk of Charter’s Southern California customers live in parts of Long Beach, Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank, Malibu, West Covina and some of the San Gabriel Valley, San Bernardino and much of the Inland Empire. That is only about 15 percent of the 2 million TWC cable customers already in the region.
• More: Read more on the Dodgers Charter TV deal on the Inside the Dodgers blog
SportsNet LA will be on Charter’s Channel 44 for standard-def and Channel 789 for high-def in the L.A. market. Because the Dodgers’ territorial rights expand to parts outside Southern California, it will also be on Charter’s systems in San Luis Obispo and Porterville. The SportsNet LA Spanish-language telecast as well as secondary audio that has Korean-language service is also included.
“The Dodgers are an iconic franchise and part of the fabric of the community,” Tom Rutledge, president and CEO of Charter Communications, said in a statement. “We are very excited to be bringing the Dodgers back to Charter customers in the L.A. area.”
On May 26, it was announced that Charter would seek federal approval to buy out Time Warner Cable in a $55 billion merger, and a promise was given that Charter customers would begin to get the Dodgers channel during the approval process. No date was given at that time.
Before the merger talks began, Charter had dug in against Time Warner Cable, along with DirecTV and many other competitors, claiming the reported $5 per subscriber fee was too high and it did not want to pass that on to its customers who were not interested in having that channel added to their system. TWC and DirecTV have recently added surcharges to customer bills to augment the costs the companies have incurred for sports-related channels that have higher monthly fees based on rising rights fees involved in the negotiation of those deals.
The Dodgers’ deal with Time Warner Cable was reported in early 2013 to be a 25-year contract that will bring the team some $8.35 billion over that period. TWC outbid previous Dodgers’ rights holder Fox Sports West/Prime Ticket.
The Charter launch on Tuesday will have Vin Scully calling the Dodgers’ home game against Arizona at 7:10 p.m.
Meanwhile, Congressman Brad Sherman, D-Los Angeles, issued a statement again requesting binding arbitration for DirecTV and other cable and dish companies that have yet to accept the Time Warner Cable parameters to adding SportsNet LA.
“I am pleased that Charter Communications will begin carrying SportsNet LA, but the work is not done yet,” he said. “Too many Angelenos still won’t have access to the Dodgers because of a 14-month dispute between cable companies over how to provide Los Angeles residents with access to Los Angeles Dodgers television broadcasts.
“I am reissuing an earlier request for Time Warner Cable into enter binding arbitration with DirecTV and others. This would be a fair and fast way to return programming to consumers. Time Warner Cable has agreed to enter into the arbitration process. They have offered to make SportsNet LA available immediately to all fans upon the initiation of binding arbitration. Immediate binding arbitration is the only mechanism that will get the Dodgers games on the air now.”
