Spectrum SportsNet LA

History

In late 2012, Fox Sports' exclusive period for negotiating a new broadcast deal with the Dodgers ended. Reports published at that time indicated that the team was negotiating with other potential broadcasters, such as the recently established Time Warner Cable SportsNet, and contemplating forming an in-house network with Dick Clark Productions, a television production company recently purchased by the Dodgers' new parent company, Guggenheim Partners.

On January 22, 2013, the Los Angeles Times reported that Time Warner Cable had signed a deal to partner with the Dodgers to form a new regional sports network, which would be majority-owned by the team.

On January 28, the Dodgers and Time Warner Cable signed a 25-year broadcast agreement valued at $8.35 billion, subject to the approval of Major League Baseball, which would see the establishment of a new channel known as SportsNet LA. The deal ended long-standing broadcast partnerships with Fox Sports West, which had aired Dodgers games on its Prime Ticket channel since 1997; and with KCAL-TV, an independent station which had been the Dodgers' over-the-air broadcast television outlet since 2006. TWC's winning bid exceeded Fox's bid by $2 billion and was worth $210 million for the inaugural 2014 season or $1.5 million a game. That amount exceeded the revenues from Prime Ticket and KCAL-TV by more than four times. The agreement increased the number of games aired: nearly 100 games were carried in 2014 compared with the 49 games aired by Prime Ticket in 2013.

Following the approval of the Dodgers' television deal, the team announced on January 16, 2014, that SportsNet LA would launch on February 25, the eve of spring training, and that all of the Dodgers' spring training games would be televised by the new channel. At least 75 games broadcast by the channel in the 2014 season were simulcast in Spanish; the channel plans to televise all its games in Spanish in the future. While the channel is not directly branded with the Dodgers' name, its logo incorporates the team's interlocking "LA" insignia; team co-owner Todd Boehly stated that the decision was "something [Time Warner Cable] thought was really valuable to their brand. We have the flexibility to sit down and evolve the name over time."

Programming

Team president Stan Kasten described Sportsnet LA as a "Dodger-only channel with Dodger-only content 24/7", featuring live game coverage and original series focusing on aspects of the team. The initial program lineup included:

As part of cutbacks across TWC's Los Angeles regional sports networks due to low viewership, Larry King at Bat and Dodgers Clubhouse were cancelled in September 2015. The following February, the channel announced it would reduce the number of spring training games it broadcasts to 16, down from 31 in 2015 and 22 in its debut year.

Talent

In August 2013, the Dodgers confirmed that long-time, Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully would retain his traditional role as solo commentator for Dodgers games in California on SportsNet LA. The 2014 MLB season marked his 65th as a baseball commentator. Scully retired at the conclusion of the 2016 Los Angeles Dodgers season.

Games not called by Scully are called by Charley Steiner (play-by-play) and Orel Hershiser (color commentary) with Alanna Rizzo as a field reporter. Rizzo, formerly of MLB Network, also hosts the pre- and post-game show from Dodger Stadium. Former baseball players Nomar Garciaparra and Jerry Hairston, Jr. (as well as Hershiser on days he isn't announcing) are also part of the pre- and post-game broadcasts. Former KABC-TV anchor John Hartung serves as a studio host. In November 2015, SportsNet LA hired a new play-by-play commentator, Joe Davis. For the 2016 season, he split play-by-play duties with Steiner for games not called by Vin Scully.

In 2015, Deportes LA was launched and the Dodger games in Spanish are called by Pepe Yniguez and Fernando Valenzuela as color commentator. Both Yniguez and Valenzuela worked with Hall of Fame play-by-play announcer Jaime Jarrin on Dodgers Spanish-language radio broadcasts from 2003 to 2014.

In 2014, the network launched Korean-language broadcasts carried on SAP, called by Richard Choi and Chong Ho Yim. The Dodgers were the first MLB team to offer a Korean-language broadcast for all of its games.

Carriage

SportsNet LA has never been available to the majority of households in its service area. Carriage was most limited in the channel's inaugural 2014 season, when it was carried by Time Warner Cable systems in Los Angeles, Bright House Networks' system in Bakersfield, and Champion Broadband serving a small portion of the San Gabriel Valley. Together, these distributors covered only 30% of the market, leaving the remaining 70% without the channel. Coverage rose when Charter Communications added SportsNet LA in June 2015, but remains under 50 percent: about 1.8 million homes. DirecTV is the largest unsigned distributor. Since Charter's acquisition of TWC on September 20, 2016, SportsNet LA is only carried by Charter and its subsidiary, Bright House Networks. Spectrum does not expect additional distributors to sign ahead of the 2017 season, which begins April 3, 2017.

The carriage dispute has become emblematic of the growing tension between high-fee sports channels and content distributors. The latter have grown concerned over losing subscribers who resent paying for sports channels they don't watch. Convergence Consulting Group predicted that by the end of 2016, some 27 million U.S. subscribers will have cut the cord on pay television services.

Early on, DirecTV offered to carry the channel on an "a la carte" basis, rather than part of a package, at whatever monthly fee TWC set. That scheme would avoid passing the cost to DirectTV's entire base of subscribers, including those not interested in the channel. TWC responded by noting that bundled regional sports channels have been an industry standard, one that DirecTV itself adheres to in other markets.

Another factor, one specific to Los Angeles, is the large number of regional sports channels in the area, which has resulted in higher subscriber costs than in other metropolitan regions. Those channels include Spectrum SportsNet (formerly Time Warner Cable SportsNet), whose ratings dropped along with the flagging performance of its most visible team, the Los Angeles Lakers. In addition, some industry observers believed that Comcast, which was trying to acquire Time Warner Cable, would write off loses on the Dodgers' contract and offer distributors a better deal. That speculation lowered the signing incentive in 2014. Comcast withdrew the acquisition proposal on April 24, 2015. In turn, Charter Communications announced its intent to acquire Time Warner Cable on May 26, 2015. As a result, Charter added SportsNet LA on June 9, making the network available to nearly 300,000 additional subscribers in the Los Angeles region.

Proposed distribution fees

In 2014, Time Warner Cable reportedly asked other distributors for an estimated $4.90 monthly fee per household, with carriage fees increasing over the length of the contract. In March 2016, TWC attempted to break the stalemate by reducing the fee for the upcoming season by about 30 percent: about $3.50 per household, according to an estimate by the analyst firm SNL Kagan. A followup offer extended the period to six years, with fees comparable to DirecTV's own Seattle-based regional sports channel, Root Sports Northwest, estimated at $3.84 per household. Both pre-season offers were rejected before opening day.

In September 2016, after acquiring TWC, Charter indicated it would price the 2017 season above $4.50. “[The previous] deal is no longer on the table—it didn’t work,” said Charter Chief Executive Thomas Rutledge to the Los Angeles Times. “We would love to sell the channel to others, but no one has bought it—and we are not giving it away. So if consumers want the Dodger channel, they’ll need to subscribe to us to get it.”

Consequences

At the end of the 2014 season, the Dodgers' television ratings (0.80) were the lowest in franchise history, averaging 42,000 households per game, less than half that of the team's nearest competitor, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. During the period, the Angels' ratings rose 49 percent, the largest gain in baseball. Some observers saw TWC's inability to resell the channel as having industry-wide consequences. Los Angeles Times business reporter Joe Flint called the standoff a potentially "definitive moment for the world of sports programming, as the industry realizes that exorbitantly priced television deals can backfire." Some business consultants to sports franchises reported a drop of interest in forming regional sports networks dedicated to a single team.

In its first two baseball seasons, Time Warner Cable lost more than $100 million a year on SportsNet LA due to the channel's limited distribution. TWC Sports President David B. Rone, who was instrumental in the company's foray into regional sports programming, departed TWC in October 2015.

In bids to increase viewership, SportsNet LA content has occasionally been broadcast on over-the-air channels carried by all cable and satellite companies in the Los Angeles region. In 2014 and 2016, the Dodgers' final six regular season games were shown on KDOC-TV and KTLA, respectively. The latter included Vin Scully's final games before his retirement. In 2017, the network will air 10 early-season games on KTLA.

DirecTV collusion lawsuit

On November 2, 2016, the United States Department of Justice sued DirecTV and its corporate successor, AT&T Inc., alleging the company colluded with its competitors to prevent SportsNet LA from being carried more widely. The parties settled the following March, resulting in stricter operating guidelines for AT&T, but no break in the negotiating stalemate.

The DOJ alleged that DirecTV had "unlawfully exchanged competitively-sensitive information" with AT&T (prior to its acquisition of DirecTV), Charter, and Cox Communications surrounding their negotiations and plans to carry SportsNet LA, in order to "obtain bargaining leverage and to reduce the risk that they would lose subscribers if they decided not to carry the channel but a competitor chose to do so."

AT&T general counsel David McAtee responded to the claims, stating that the company made its decision "independently, legally and only after thorough negotiations with the content owner”, and argued that no other provider carried the channel because they did not want to pass TWC's "inflated prices" for the channel on to consumers.

The March 2017 settlement required AT&T to better ensure that its employees maintain confidentiality during contract negotiations. But the state of those negotiations remained unchanged as AT&T was not required to make any bargaining concessions.