Let's hope that Mr. Pegula ponies up some bucks to buy out the broadcast contract with MSG and fire up their own network like EMPIRE. Golisano did the TV contract on the cheap (in some ways I dont blame him) but it would be nice to see more local content and a real, no kidding pre-game and post-game show again. .
They don't have pre and post game shows for a major sports franchise in the biggest television market in the country? Both MLB teams and the NBA and NHL franchises in Baltimore-Washington all have pre and post game shows, every game, every time (Aside from national telecasts, of course). NFL is a bit of a different story because it's always national. The Ravens and Redskins both used to have post game shows anyhow, but the Ravens lost their's due to a rift between the team and Peter Angelos (the owner of the Orioles, who's run the team into the ground and owns one of the RSNs here).
In the mean time......CHARLIE, give us something up here in WNY PLEASE! We're tired of watching Cleveland sports and we want our Sabres!
I think this stuff with not carrying the RSNs is kind of ridiculous. Unless I felt really boxed in due to price differences between providers or being in a place where I only had access to one provider, to me them dropping an RSN would be a reason to immediately switch providers. That's (all the local RSNs) a basic bread and butter thing that has to be there IMO. Otherwise, I ain't paying.
Of course, being under contract complicates things and might force me, or people like me, to stick around longer than we'd want to in such a situation, but eventually contracts run out. I try to avoid contracts for exactly that reason -- somehow the big corporation has leeway to change a bunch of stuff (Including, say, dropping the very channel(s) that made you sign up in the 1st place) and yet if something changes on your end financially or in some other way, they still expect you to pay, no matter what. Lost your job? Pay up. Hospitalized? Pay up. Moved to some place you can't access the service? Pay up. Heck, if you have a situation where due to changing circumstances you've got to choose between food or their service, even if you're all paid up and just want to cancel future month's services, they expect you to pick their service (Granted, you would buy the food and tell them to screw themselves -- but they'll seriously nick your credit score over it and it'll cause you problems later -- and sooner than later in the form of attempts to collect on unpaid EFTs). It's almost like involuntary servitude.
These contracts are very one sided -- you guarantee you'll pay every month for a set period of time, but they don't offer any minimum guarantee in terms of the channels you get in your package or even a fixed price for the term of your contract. Like, I signed up and then two months later they raised the price $5 a month -- you'd think, since I have a
contract that I'd be immune to a price increase until the contract expires, but it doesn't work that way. All these contracts are very one sided in favor of the company, not just with Dish but with almost anyone you deal with. The government really ought to step in and regulate, because the average consumer doesn't have enough leverage to bargain for a fair deal.
