Springtime is a great time of year. The change back to daylight savings, warmer weather, driving with the windows down, and baseball. Baseball is by far my favorite sport. It’s my favorite sport both to watch, play and listen to. The NY Mets have been my baseball team since about 1981. Through the horrible early 1980s, the 1986 Word Series, the late 1980s fade-out, the horrible 1990s, and the rebirth in the last few years of a promising team. However, as of typing this, I can’t watch them.
Once upon a time in the 1990s, the NY Mets were broadcast on WWOR (Channel 9). It was an OTA station (over the air). If you didn’t have cable TV, it wasn’t a problem. Fiddle with your rabbit ears on the TV, and you could watch the Mets. In the eatly 1990s, both the Mets and Yankees moved off of WWOR and WPIX respectively, and moved to their own regional sports networks (RSNs) with the Mets splitting time between WPIX and MSG and the Yankees going to their own YES! network.
When the Yankees started YES! in the early naughts, Cablevision – the cable operator in this territory – refused to pickup the YES! network. They didn’t carry the station for a year, and Cablevision customers who were also Yankees fans were forced to go to DirecTV, as DirecTV carried and still does carry the YES! network.
On March 16th, 2005 the NY Mets started their own RSN called Sportsnet NY. Soon after this date, Verizon was the first TV provider to get a carrier agreement with Sportsnet NY. That’s just fucking great, because hardly anyone is eligible for FiosTV yet in NY. (Verizon has rolled out Fios Internet to some communities including mine since Feb 2005, but their Fios TV will be held up by political redtape in each municipality.) Cablevision signed Sportsnet NY a few days later, learning their lesson when they failed to sign YES! in a timely mannor. On opening day, too late to see the first game, DirecTV came to an agreement with Sportsnet NY, and the first broadcast on DirecTV will be tomorrow, Wednesday 4/5/06.
I have the Dish Network, and I’ve been extremely happy with it for the 17 months I’ve had it. However, they don’t carry the YES! network and they don’t at the current time carry Sportsnet NY. They say they are in deep discussion with Sportsnet NY, but that’s just saying that neither side has agreed to relinquish any of their outrageously high demands at the current time.
So, here in lies the problem. I live on Long Island, 15 miles away from Shea Stadium, but due to the fact I have The Dish Network, I will be unable to watch the large majority (+130) of NY Mets games unless Echostar (Dish) comes to a carriage agreement with Sportsnet NY.
If they do not, I move to DirecTV. And I’d hate to do that because we like Dish here, and my friend does not like DirecTV. He hates Cablevision, but members of his family are Yankee fans, so for him, it’s Cablevision, DirecTV or nothing. 🙂
How I long for the days when I could tune the rabbit ears to a fuzzy channel 9 and watch the Mets whenever I wanted.