posted 2007/03/25 at 18:22
I wrote a few weeks ago about how moving from Toledo was likely to force me to choose between keeping my Canadian hockey coverage or watching all of my Detroit sports teams. I suppose this is one area where my local cable company was doing me a great service, even if I don't like the owners for locking their newspaper workers out and just generally not being very nice people. However, this isn't to say that they're totally pleasing me in this regard.
See, although Fox Sports Net Detroit carries the bulk of Red Wings and Tigers game, some games are still being broadcast on Detroit's Fox affiliate, WJBK-2. Unfortunately, a couple of years ago our local cable company decided not to renew their agreement to carry WJBK, even though they still carry nearly all the other major broadcast networks coming from Detroit. I've missed a handful of Red Wings games this year because of this, including yesterday's game. (Between the Wings losing and Todd Bertuzzi playing, though, perhaps that was for the best.)
Now, from what I understand, Fox basically told their local affiliates to jack up their fees to cable companies, in a similar move to how the cable companies are being forced to pay far more to carry Fox News Channel than they used to. A similar thing happened when my local cable company was one of many that chose not to pay an extra fee to the NFL in order to carry the football games that were shown exclusively on NFL Network late last season (which caused me to miss a key Bengals game), and in both this case and the WJBK case (if WJBK did indeed significantly raise their rates to be carried in Toledo), then yeah, my local cable company is in the right to stand up to them. Still, though, with all the other stuff that company's been doing, it kind of doesn't sit right with me to say that, at least in these instances, they're in the right.
The reason I bring this up is that the Tigers' opening day is a week from tomorrow, and not only is this the first year in a long time that I'm enthusiastic about the Tigers at the start of the season, but this is also the first year in the past five or six that I'd actually be able to watch the opening day game here at home. I would watch the game, that is, if I could, but unfortunately it's going to be on WJBK and not FSN Detroit. Sigh. Maybe if I'm lucky it'll be broadcast locally as well, but somehow I have the feeling that I'll have to settle for watching the game after opening day. That figures.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon