pucks 02 Oct 2009 11:46 pm
Comcast hates children.
Title blatantly lifted from a friend; overall text is a case of self-plagiarism.
It’s hard to pick a winner in the Versus (aka Comcast)/DirecTV fight, though, in short, Comcast is pure evil.
Case in point: the United States television landscape is littered with Comcast SportsNet channels, including one right here in the BalWash. There’s a CSN flavor in Philadelphia proper, of course, but that specific channel is not available on any satellite system because of an FCC loophole. Back in the day, there was a channel called PRISM (short for Philly Regional something-or-other) which sat alongside HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime as a beyond-basic cable channel that showed bad movies (usually with late-night brief nudity). PRISM also carried bad-at-the-time Philadelphia sports teams, and as sports networks matured, PRISM eventually morphed into the local Philadelphia branch of CSN. The majority of CSN channels in non-Philadelphia markers, as well as similar outfits like YES, NESN, and MASN, are available to subscribers all across the country via satellite packages, feeding the hometown needs of sports diaspora.
But Comcast is exempt from offering the CSN Philly feed to dish companies (read: rival carriers). Why? Well, true to its roots, CSN Philadelphia is broadcast through the old PRISM infrastructure, a tangled web of microwaves and fiber; the distributed feed of CSN Philadelphia never touches a satellite during normal production and delivery. By avoiding use of satellites, CSN Philadelphia qualifies for what is called the “terrestrial exception”, an oft-argued loophole in FCC satellite regulation. Perhaps intended to encourage cable companies to produce decent local programming, the exception has been used by several cable companies — Comcast is not alone — to keep satellite and fiber providers from carrying some of their channels. For example, Cablevision — owner of the New York Rangers, as well as their cable home MSG (and their literal home in Madison Square Garden), has offered a standard definition of MSG-TV to Verizon FiOS; however, the high definition feed was held back and provided only to Cablevision subscribers.
In the case of CSN Philadelphia, the loophole allows Comcast to keep its local flavor of CSN (as well as sister station CN8, which handles overflow duties when CSN is full) out of the hands of satellite providers. Cable’s competitors have been in and out of court for the past ten years, trying to get the exception stricken from the books, but the FCC has turned down every request. Comcast is especially protective of CSN Philadelphia because it is the home channel in Comcast’s home market; the majority of the other horses in the CSN stable were bought from other outlets — notably Fox Sports Net, SportsChannel, and Home Team Sports — and rebranded to fit under the CSN umbrella.
Today, the overall effect of Comcast exercising the loophole is that dish companies have less of an penetration into the Philadelphia area than you would expect of a major American media market. These dish carriers are hamstrung because they have little to no access to local sports feeds, and let’s face it, sports fans probably make up a significant portion of overall dish subscribers.
The loophole even stretches to the Center Ice package. CI usually offers both home and away feeds, with a few notable exceptions. One of those exceptions? CSN Philadelphia, which is apparently available via CI only if it is the sole feed available for that game (i.e., a game where Philly’s opponent has declined to broadcast). I found research that suggests that if you live inside the Philadelphia market, any CI feed of a Flyers game is blacked out, home, away, opponent, whomever … but I neither live in that market nor subscribe to CI, so firsthand knowledge is out the window.
The loophole isn’t related to the Versus/DirecTV battle directly, except to demonstrate the overall evility of Comcast. Try to keep in mind that anything that comes out of the mouths of Versus personnel has been fed to them by Comcast. Plan your route accordingly.
Game on!