Now that his team has the court's approval to call itself the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Arte Moreno is about to close a 10-year, $500 million deal to have his teams game televised on Fox Sports Net West.
The Angels had previously split its broadcast among several outlets, including KCAL (Channel 9) and two UHF channels as well as FSN West, but the Dodgers are moving over to KCAL for 2006 and the Angels have opted not to have an over-the-air outlet for its games as FSN West is supposed to televise around 150 games a year.
Plans for an Angels-owned network are apparently done for a year. And I was so much looking forward to "Halo-ography". I could hear Terry Smith's soothing (OK, soporific) voice telling me all about the career of Merritt Ranew.
Merritt Ranew. I love it! My first APBA set was based on the 1962 season when the man with more triples (his card had lots of '2s' behind the three '0s') than doubles or home runs was a rookie.
Bob - educate me here. What does this mean for viewership? Is FSN West in most homes in the normal viewing area? Is it normally basic cable like ESPN or is it additional? How will this affect Moreno's aggressive move to gain Latin marketshare from the Dodgers and Padres? How much more money is this TV deal than the last or what the Dodgers are getting?
Pretty much every cable system in Southern California has FSN unless the particular cable company is upset at News Corp for the rates they charge.
My cable system, Time-Warner, didn't carry FSN West 2, for a while. But it always had FSN West.
As for gaining the Latino marketplace, Moreno recently bought a radio station of his own to broadcast games in Spanish, although the Angels had had deals in place before for Spanish language broadcasts.
From my attendance at Angels games, I think the Angels are still well behind the Dodgers in percentage of Latino fans. The Dodgers also have the Vin Scully of the Spanish language market in Jaime Jarrin doing the broadcasting.
FSN West is basic cable for all cable channels and both Dish Network and DIRECTV. 80% of Los Angeles subscribes to one of those three, although some cable subscribers who order "lifeline" would not get FSN. Interestingly, the recent "Family Packages" that have been introduced by these companies to satisfy Congress do not contain any sports channels. No ESPN, no regional sports networks.
80% is relatively low multichannel video penetration for a large city, probably due to the large non-english speaking population that can get much of their programming over the air.
Checking my cable system (Time-Warner), FSN West and FSN West 2 are part of "Cable Basic" package. You can also get a "Broadcast Basic" package that doesn't include it.
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My cable system, Time-Warner, didn't carry FSN West 2, for a while. But it always had FSN West.
As for gaining the Latino marketplace, Moreno recently bought a radio station of his own to broadcast games in Spanish, although the Angels had had deals in place before for Spanish language broadcasts.
From my attendance at Angels games, I think the Angels are still well behind the Dodgers in percentage of Latino fans. The Dodgers also have the Vin Scully of the Spanish language market in Jaime Jarrin doing the broadcasting.
80% is relatively low multichannel video penetration for a large city, probably due to the large non-english speaking population that can get much of their programming over the air.
Comment status: comments have been closed. Baseball Toaster is now out of business.