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Congressman Jim Moran, Representing the 8th District of Virginia
Alexandria, Arlington Fairfax County, Falls Church, Reston

Op-Eds & Columns

Bringing the Nationals to the Viewers

By U.S. Rep. James Moran

Nationals fans hungry for more televised games have finally achieved victory. Comcast, the major cable provider in the region representing 1.3 million customers has agreed to carry Peter Angelos’ MASN channel, which broadcasts all Nats games.

For the past two seasons, Comcast has shown only 40 of the Nats 162 games, eight of which are national telecasts broadcast on FOX or ESPN. This meant that over 75 percent of the Nationals season was off the air for a major segment of the viewing public in Northern Virginia, D.C. and Maryland. At a crucial time in the Nationals development as a franchise, with District residents forking over hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new stadium, having a Nationals blackout in 1.3 million local homes was truly unacceptable.

The reasons for the Nationals lack of air time are many and depend on which side you talk to. This has been a bitter dispute between a powerful corporate entity and a powerful businessman. Mr. Angelos contends that the price he paid for the Orioles in 1996 included TV rights to any major league baseball played in Maryland, D.C., Virginia and North Carolina. This was due to an action taken by MLB’s owners in the early ‘80’s that essentially carved up a map of the U.S., with owners of the various franchises each getting their piece of the pie. Under this arrangement, as owner of the Orioles, Mr. Angelos owns the Nats TV rights in perpetuity, with Nats owners able to own only 33 percent of their own team’s TV rights over a 30 year period. It’s a bum deal for the Nats and something MLB should change. But one that Mr. Angelos took no part in when it was originally decided since he was not an owner.

From Comcast’s perspective, MASN costs too much for a station that provides very little content. Re-runs of Orioles games and sports talk shows are about the only thing playing right now on MASN when live games are not being shown. Comcast takes strong issue with MLB’s television rights arrangement, characterizing it as the “original sin” in this dispute during a Government Reform Committee hearing in April. Comcast’s major beef in all of this is that Mr. Angelos will no longer allow Orioles games to be televised on Comcast’s sports channel, Comcast Sportsnet, instead placing them on his newly created MASN network. Having spent resources building the network in anticipation of having control of both Nationals and Orioles games, Comcast was not pleased by Mr. Angelos actions.

A number of area lawmakers including Congressman Davis and myself have been very concerned about this situation. Working with local fans and organizations like NationalsPride.com who were upset that their local ball club was not getting the airtime it deserved, we held hearings and sent correspondence to the FCC. In our letter to the FCC, we asked that the pending merger between Comcast and Adelphia Cable be contingent on requiring Comcast and MASN to enter binding arbitration to settle the controversy once and for all. The FCC took our concerns into consideration, issuing a favorable ruling in July.

Last Friday, Comcast finally acquiesced in this dispute, agreeing to begin televising Nationals games through MASN on September 1st, just in time for an extended Labor Day weekend. This truly is a victory for the fans. In the long-run, the Nationals organization will benefit by helping to expand their growing fan base and the region wins because a successful major league team is both a source of great pride and potential economic benefit. Let’s go Nats!