Jun 04

Big news for Dodger TV viewers

Effective Tuesday, June 9, Charter Communications will carry the Dodgers’ Sports Net LA channel. This is a result of Charter’s purchase of Time Warner Cable, which closed a couple of weeks ago.

SportsNet LA will be included in Charter’s most widely available cable package, which is called Spectrum TV Select. Charter has nearly 300,000 subscriber homes in the Los Angeles region.

In the Los Angeles market, the channel will become Charter’s standard-definition Channel 44. It will be broadcast in high definition on Channel 789.

[snip]

Beginning Tuesday, nearly 2 million homes in Southern California will have access to the channel as part of their cable lineups.

Charter’s decision is not expected to immediately prompt the other hold-out pay-TV companies, including DirecTV, Dish Network, Cox Communications and Verizon FiOS, to begin carrying the channel.

But the pressure may begin to mount. AT&T’s acquisition of Direct TV is expected to get regulatory approval within a few weeks, and that might prompt a change to the content lineup there. If so, that would give access to Dodger games to another 1.2 million subscribers.