Tweet

Senate Eyes DirecTV/MLB Deal

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/15/2007 6:31:00 AM

The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing March 27 on the DirecTV/Major League Baseball deal.

While the hearing is billed as "Exclusive Sports Programming: Examining Competition and Consumer Choice," it is sure to deal heavily with the satellite company's proposed exclusive--with caveats--

sports deal with MLB

.The caveat is that the deal will not be exclusive if the current carriers of MLB's Extra Innings package of out-of-market games agree to the same terms as DirecTV, which include carrying baseball's cable network on expanded basic. Commerce Committee member John Kerry (D-Mass.) asked the FCC to

look into the deal

, concerned that it would leave 50 million viewers without out-of-market games and decrease choice and competition.DirecTV has countered that viewers can always switch to its service or stream the games online.The issue of access to must-have sports programming has heated up in Washington, thanks in part to a program-access tussle between MidAtlantic Sports Network and Comcast over the hometown

Washington Nationals

baseball team.

Tweet

Talkback

We would love your feedback!

Post a comment

» View All Talkback Threads

Related Content

• Topics
• Author
• Most Popular Pages

No related content found.

Also by this author

• 'Smart Broadcasting'Is Broadband

• Roland Martin Remains On TV One

• CNN's Candy Crowley Receives Wiliam Allen White Citation

• FCC Skeds First Mobility Fund Auction for September

• Rural Telcos: FCC Sec. 706 Authority Covers Retrans Reform

Also by John Eggerton

Most Popular Pages

No Top Articles

• Resource Center
• Browse Categories
• Browse Companies

Featured Company

• Mixpo

  

  Mixpo is a video advertising technology provider that enables publishers, ad networks, and agencies to easily deliver dynamically tailored, interactive video ads that are customized in real-time for unique audience segments. Our platform also provides automatic multivariate testi..more

---

Most Recent Resources

• The New Normal for Promoting Tune-in
• Infrastructure Design for High Volume Video Workflows
• Mobile Media Strategies That Work
• Multi Format Encoding for Efficient Content Repurposing
• The CIOs Guide to Videoconferencing Security Keeping Pace with th..