Sports Media Wrap-Up: The Best Laid Plans

We approach the world of sports as a mere (though not small) subset of its wealthiest enabler, television, so the hell w/ scores & stats, here's some local sports media action the civilized world may not be fully aware of. Local sports media schadenfreude, even, though we'll probably be laughing out of the other side of our mouth when cable rates go up as a result.

The misery we're enjoying is the property of TimeWarnerCable (An outfit that provides cable tee vee, Internet & telephone service to both New York City's Manhattan Island & most of Los Angeles & its many surrounding/enveloped by communities. You know, the top two decadent coastal enclaves. How'd TWC manage that?) which has recently gone nuts w/ sports programming, adding the NFL network (after nine effing yrs. of negotiation) & several other sports channels. Lotta fucking Association football channels too. (Why they want to make America-haters feel at home here is beyond us, but they do.)

But TimeWarner's biggest move was committing to pay the Los Angeles Lakers (a basketball team, if you don't know but almost care) literally billions of US$ over the next X yrs. for close to exclusive telebision rights. Exclusive in that there are no more over-the-air broadcasts of Laker road games, & exclusive in that TWC was asking other cable providers for lots o' money, causing fans to worry they'd be even more screwed than usual once the season started.

And what's giving us the schadenfreude is that the Lakers, whose off-season acquisitions (of players, not just TWC funds) provoked various media blatherers & typists to contemplate this season's aggregation being possibly the best team ever (no, really) currently SUCK, BITE, CHEW, BLOW & EAT, also. As in historically bad, awful & not any good either. We must assume viewership is down, unless the train wreck factor's at work. Ha ha, either way.

Research: US$3 billion to the Lakers over 20 yrs. Added research indicates schadenfreude potential may be almost unlimited:

Time Warner Cable will shell out between $7 billion and $8 billion for a 20-to-25-year partnership in which it will manage much of the operations and handle distribution. The channel would likely launch either late this year or early next year after the Dodgers' deal with Prime Ticket ends.

With the Dodgers having their own channel, it will bring the number of regional sports networks in Los Angeles to six. Besides the Dodgers channel, there is Fox Sports West (Angels and Kings), Prime Ticket (Clippers), SportsNet and the Spanish-language sister service Deportes, and the Pac-12 channel.

"That's too many channels," Marc Ganis, a sports industry consultant in Chicago told the Los Angeles Times earlier this week. "I can't imagine that is sustainable on a long-term basis."

Hee hee.

We're also figuring there's some sort of cable curse here, & that next season the Dodgers will suck even more than recently as a result of TWC handing them those billions. It's obviously what happened to the Lakers.