Should Time Warner put MASN on basic cable, available to all customers, even if monthly bills go up a buck or two? Or should the sports network, which televises baseball's Orioles and Nationals, be offered on a more expensive sports tier, available only to those subscribers willing to pay for it?
The only reason the Braves are so popular in the Triangle (and lots of other places) is because their games were on TBS for so long. With the free ride on TBS gone, this is why MASN wants basic cable carriage. If they are the only channel with baseball every day, the teams on the channel will get more and more popular there. As for the Braves games, you will get every Braves game that you currently are blacked out of, with the rest available on MLB Extra Innings if you are willing to pay for it.
I don't care if a sports channel is carried on basic cable or not, but I can't think of a regional sports network anywhere that Time Warner carries on digital cable within its designated region rather than basic.
Either they add MASN and give us o's and nationals games, or they give us Braves games on our FSN. The way I see it we should get the O's on basic cable. The Nationals I'd like to see too since we can't even see them on Extra Innings. There is no reason that we should not have any "local" baseball games available for going on 2 years now.
The reason for basic cable is to keep the price down for folks that only require the basics... If you want additional channels, bug TW for individual channel selections. They could do it! However, be prepared for more BOX outages due to programming problems. TW technology really stinks and they should be paying us to test this crap (sorry I get so frustrated with their treatment of customers). We really need more cable choices in the Raleigh area and we all would see improvements in the services offered. PRICE TOO!
Time Warner and MASN
The Triangle is NOT an Orioles/Nationals area! MLB might think so but it is not. I dare say there are more Braves fans than Orioles and Nats combined.
No, I do not want to pay for MASN unless they can provide Braves games which we are not allowed to see.