HHP: MASN/Nats/Orioles case (Inside the Courtroom)

[sportsfan8703]

I look at it this way, I pay $150 a month for cable. I only have cable so I can watch baseball/ occasional football. So for $25 a month for roughly six months would only be 1 mon th of cable that I would drop, saving me roughly $1650. I'd do that in a heartbeat, especially if it could be opted to pay just 1 team.

MLB and their blackout rule really stinks and is probably hurting them a bit at this point in time, and will def. hurt them in the long run.

Yeah I got screwed over big time by Fios and would easily just elect to buy O's MASN for 25 a month sort of like they used to do with Howard Stern ON DEMAND if anyone remembers from 2 years ago. I was forced to jump to tv channel packages higher just to get MASN. Somehow I still don't even have MLB network. My bill went from 75 to 125 in March. I'd much rather just pay a single rate for the O's games during the season. And for those to say to get the MLB package. Your home team is blacked out for this very reason. So the O's would not be shown on MLB package around here.

[Crabcakes]

seeing how I can get the propaganda channels (Fox, CNN, etc.) on streaming & History Channel, Learning Channel, etc. on streaming.......I'd cut the cable umbilical, pay for NFL Season Ticket, MLB & gladly pay the same price for MASN....I 'd be ahead.....by hundreds!

[DrungoHazewood]

I'd have to think about that. O's or the other 29 teams.

Gameday + Game thread is almost as good as watching the game.

Yea, but you're just one of those computer nerds who think that exporting Fangraphs WAR values to spreadsheets is better than watching baseball.

[DrungoHazewood]

Seems to me that the inevitable result of people cutting the cord and debundling the channels they receive, is that the price of the individual channels they receive will go up. In other words, MASN only adds about $2 to your cable bill now, but if the service changes so that only those who want it will have to purchase it, it's going to cost a lot more than $2 per household to buy.

So, let me pose the question, how much would you be willing to pay per month to see the Orioles on TV? If I could cut the cord and not pay for all the cable channels I don't want, I'm sure I'd be willing to pay $25/month for the Orioles during the baseball season. That's basically $1 per game. Well worth it to this diehard fan.

So looking into my crystal ball I'd guess that when someone starts mandating a la carte there will be a period of chaos and madness, where about a third of all channels go out of business and a lot of cool, niche programming goes away because what I think is cool is shared by tens of people across the country. A battle will be fought over channels that have a small handful of interesting shows that people typically watch for an hour a week, or will occasionally settle on when flipping - the kind of stuff you might pay $0.50 a month for, but if they're charging you $2 you just don't buy. Example, the Cooking Channel, I'll flip over there sometimes if I'm bored and they're showing reruns of Alton Brown's old Good Eats, and I'll enjoy it. But if the cooking channel wanted $2 a month there's no way.

Most of the sports networks will probably stay solvent, many still very profitable. But some might die or get bought out or go to some new streaming model they'll have to fight MLB over. If MASN was something that relied on die hards to pay $10 or $20 a month for in 2006 I'm not sure it would ever have gotten off the ground.

And I'm so cynical about cable TV I'd bet that we'll all pay more for 50 channels we've picked than we do now for 500 channels that we watch 10% of.

[weams]

When do we expect to hear from the judge? Does anyone think it is a negotiated settlement that is occurring?

[Frobby]

When do we expect to hear from the judge? Does anyone think it is a negotiated settlement that is occurring?

No. Courts act on their own timetable. The elapsed time since the oral argument is nothing unusual. I've had judges take an entire year to make a decision on complicated issues. Hopefully this won't take that long.

[TonySoprano]

No. Courts act on their own timetable. The elapsed time since the oral argument is nothing unusual. I've had judges take an entire year to make a decision on complicated issues. Hopefully this won't take that long.

Another reset period after 2016. MASN purgatory.

[weams]

No. Courts act on their own timetable. The elapsed time since the oral argument is nothing unusual. I've had judges take an entire year to make a decision on complicated issues. Hopefully this won't take that long.

Thanks for the heads up. As you know, I think that it is critical for the future of the franchise for some type of help from the courts.

[eddie83]

I think this whole thing is crucial. Who knows how much this is impacting our spending?

[spiritof66]

No decision yet. But I just caught up with an announcement made last week that the judge assigned to the MASN case, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lawrence Marks, has been appointed as chief administrative judge of New York State, effective last Friday.

http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/id=1202733373195/Marks-Chosen-as-New-Chief-Administrative-Judge

Chief administrative judge is a big job, with oversight of the operation of all the courts throughout the state. I am pretty sure it's been a full-time job for Marks' predecessors, one of whom is now the Chief Judge of the state's highest court. The announcement says that Marks will retain his cases in the Manhattan court, but he'll presumably be pretty busy with his new post. (As I think I mentioned before, Marks had been top assistant to the chief administrative judge at the same time he was serving as a Manhattan Supreme Court justice, and as a result he has had a reduced number of cases.)

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Marks hand over his cases to a new judge in the next few weeks, and just hope that if that happens he decides the MASN case before then.

[Machado13]

My personal opinion is this market can't carry 2 baseball teams. Just my opinion.

I don't see dmv area having as much interest as LA/NY/CHI.

I don't know what will come of this but NFL is a different animal and ravens/redskins works.

I think both Os and Nats suffer from having the other in town and more the Os just based on market size.

[Frobby]

(As I think I mentioned before, Marks had been top assistant to the chief administrative judge at the same time he was serving as a Manhattan Supreme Court justice, and as a result he has had a reduced number of cases.)

It's probably worth clarifying, for the readers here, that in the crazy nomenclature of the New York courts, the "Supreme Court" is actually a trial court, and there are two levels of appellate courts above the "Supreme" Court. So, Justice Marks' decision is just the first stop of this legal odyssey.

[DrungoHazewood]

My personal opinion is this market can't carry 2 baseball teams. Just my opinion.

I don't see dmv area having as much interest as LA/NY/CHI.

I don't know what will come of this but NFL is a different animal and ravens/redskins works.

I think both Os and Nats suffer from having the other in town and more the Os just based on market size.

My personal opinion is that of course this area can support two baseball teams. Baltimore by itself is about as large as St. Louis, and Washington is easily a top-10 market. Baseball is structured to favor larger markets, so a combined Washington-Baltimore market would have some advantages. But that doesn't mean a split market can't work. And now you can never go back. Even if the Nats disappeared tomorrow all of those people in Washington would not return to the Orioles for many, many years. I know I've seen quite a few old Senators fans drop the O's and pick up the Nats like the 35 year gap never happened.

[weams]

I really hope that even if this is simply the first stage of the process that an initial win would put both sides in better position to negotiate an end to the madness.

[eddie83]

I really hope that even if this is simply the first stage of the process that an initial win would put both sides in better position to negotiate an end to the madness.

This is such a mess. The shame is that it comes at a time when the team is competitive and money really matters. Not like this happened in the middle of our 14 years of losing which would not have impacted our team as much in the short term.