How Can I Watch the Twins Today? (And Seven Other Questions about the Twins-Bally-Comcast Clustermuck)

[DJL44]

7 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

An over the air provider is not going to sign a 1 or 2 year contract.  That broadcaster has to buy equipment, hire many people, and invest existing resources to take on this endeavor. 

Not sure why the Twins would be interested in another 1 year contract. They should be looking for a long-term solution.

There is really no reason to have the home and away teams producing separate broadcasts of the same game with redundant cameras and production crews. That may be an area that gets cut to save money if MLB takes over the broadcasts. MLB could sell their feed to anyone for rebroadcast over the air, on cable or streaming.

[Major League Ready]

2 hours ago, DJL44 said:

Not sure why the Twins would be interested in another 1 year contract. They should be looking for a long-term solution.

There is really no reason to have the home and away teams producing separate broadcasts of the same game with redundant cameras and production crews. That may be an area that gets cut to save money if MLB takes over the broadcasts. MLB could sell their feed to anyone for rebroadcast over the air, on cable or streaming.

Again, agree they should be looking for a long-term deal.  Why should they sign a long-term deal that would assure them of being at a disadvantage to the rest of the league?  Wouldn't it make sense to sign a stop gap deal while they (and the league) work on a better solution?  Is it possible that the league pushed hard for this approach?

[Eris]

The TV rights dispute between Bally and Comcast was covered in the Wall Street Journal. The issue is that Bally wants Comcast to charge all their cable subscribers while Comcast wants to offer a tier of service so that only subscribers to the Twins channel are paying. 
 

Had Bally executives been reading the comments section in TD this past winter they would have realized that the cable subscription model would eventually become an issue with the pay to subscribe model being the best long term solution. 
 

Bally wants the current/ past model of charging every cable customer as it generates the most revenue for Bally. Comcast dislikes this model as many customers are charged for services they don’t use and this encourages cord cutting.