Earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission finally seated its new commissioners. Now, the full five-member panel is finally prepared to deliberate on an issue that has plagued Triangle baseball fans for two years: MASN.
Those four letters have been a point of controversy around here, ever since the fledgling network assumed the rights to carry Major League Baseball in this market for the 2007 season and Time Warner Cable refused to give it a channel position on basic cable.
The ensuing stalemate has lasted ever since.
For years, the Triangle got a steady dose of Baltimore Orioles games on cable, on what was variously called Home Team Sports (HTS) or FSN South. That changed in 2007, when the Orioles and Washington Nationals moved to the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN).
DirecTV and Dish Network added the channel, as did a handful of cable providers in eastern North Carolina, but not Time Warner.
Two arbitrators and an FCC official have ruled against Time Warner, which appealed the latest ruling to the full FCC. That appeal has been sitting idle since October as the FCC waited out the inevitable post-election turnover.
The FCC has started working again -- Monday, it approved a merger that had been awaiting an FCC decision since September -- but an FCC spokesman said the committee has a number of cases awaiting rulings, and there's no telling when this one will be heard.
So while in theory a resolution is approaching, it could be a long time yet before the FCC gets around to it. Even when the FCC does rule, there's always the possibility Time Warner will find another legal avenue to pursue.
In other words, it could still be a long time before baseball is back on cable here. Don't hold your breath.
To be fair, this isn't a simple dispute, and with so much PR on both sides, it can be hard to sort out the fact from the fiction. Most of the confusion seems to come on two fronts.
The first: "Why can't we get Atlanta Braves games instead?" The answer: Because Major League Baseball considers this to be the television territory of the Orioles and Nationals. Time Warner's arguments that MASN isn't "local" programming ring hollow here; like it or lump it, it's up to MLB to divvy up TV markets between teams.
While some here would disagree, Braves fans and Time Warner executives both, it isn't their decision.
The second: "Why doesn't MASN just accept a position in a sports package on Time Warner, and people who want baseball can pay extra for it?" The answers: One, because baseball was carried on basic cable in the pre-MASN days, meaning Time Warner would be charging for something it used to provide for free; and two, an obscure agreement arising from the breakup of the Adelphia cable system appears to give MASN the right to a basic-cable position (or so two arbitrators and the FCC Media Bureau have ruled).
Meanwhile, Time Warner has added the MLB Network and the New York Yankees' YES Network to various digital-cable packages, even though Yankees games are blacked out here anyway. Because those channels aren't on basic cable, it's not comparing apples to apples, even if it may have rubbed already-aggrieved Orioles fans the wrong way. (It should be noted that Time Warner owns a piece of the MLB Network.)
So now we wait on the FCC. No matter what it rules, there are probably going to be quite a few lawyers between here and the final result.
After almost three full baseball seasons of waiting, what's a fourth?
