Mets Television Network to Debut in 2006
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The same day the American League Championship Series gets started, when most New York sports fans are fixated on one of the fiercest rivalries in sports – the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox – the Mets announced their own TV dreams.
The new network, which has yet to be named, is being developed jointly with Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable, a unit of Time Warner Inc. It will launch in spring 2006.
It will reach more than 3 million Time Warner and Comcast customers on the expanded basic tier. The companies also expect to reach carriage agreements with other area cable and satellite providers.
So far, the new network has rights to broadcast up to 125 of the Mets regular season baseball games. It will also air other professional and college sporting events, though the companies declined to comment further.
Both Time Warner and Comcast, along with the Mets’ media company, Sterling Entertainment Enterprises, will own equity stakes in the new network. Further financial terms were not disclosed.
For Time Warner, the deal gives the company more control over some of its sports programming. This past summer, the company got into a dispute with Cablevision Systems Corp., which now owns the rights to broadcast Mets games. Time Warner accused the New York cable operator of overcharging for the MSG and Fox Sports Network, which Cablevision controls. The dispute continued until Time Warner pulled the channels off the air for several days in August.
Time Warner spokesman Keith Cocozza said the company decided to team up with Comcast because of Comcast’s experience in managing regional sports networks.
Comcast operates four regional sports networks across the country and will be in charge of overseeing day-to-day operations at the new network, as well.
Comcast has 890,000 customers in New Jersey and Connecticut, but none in New York.
Losing the Mets is seen as a big letdown for Cablevision which has the bulk of its customers in the New York area. It also a replay of three years ago when Cablevision lost the rights to Yankees as the team started up its own network,YES.
Earlier this season, the Mets paid the cable operator $54 million in order to get out of its contract with Cablevision and buy back broadcast rights for the 2006 season.
A spokesperson from Cablevision’s MSG Networks, which has been airing Mets games, was not immediately available to comment.
