Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Baseball? You Don't Need Any Stinking Baseball...

I hate Time Warner Cable.

Yes, I'm using the word 'hate' here. Why? Well, without turning into a raving lunatic, let me just say this: ordered Extra Innings in 2005. They didn't turn it on. I called the next day to inquire why. They turned it on and CHARGED ME AGAIN. Four phone calls and four months later, they turned off my cable TV (during Game 2 of the 2005 NLCS, by the way) because it was delinquent. Seems when they assured me they had corrected the problem, the operator entered the wrong code and charged me a third time, making my account $200 in arrears. They turned on my cable and fixed the billing problem that night. I won't go into detail as to how I accomplished that.

So when AT&T came around this past December offering phone/cable TV/internet connectivity for a low price, I jumped at the chance to leave Time Warner once and for all. Since then the following things have become apparent:

a) Channel 4 Padres is a cable subscriber service only. So I won't have Padres games on TV this season.
b) Roadrunner is a faster internet connection than DSL. This may be obvious to you the reader, but it wasn't to me.
c) MLB has decided to renew the MLB Extra Innings package only on DirectTV.

Today the cable subscribers reportedly agreed to match DirectTV's offer to carry out-of-market games for MLB. MLB, being the savvy public relations people that they are, quickly released a statement that the offer did not come close to matching DirectTV's offer.

Let's look at this from two perspectives:

1. If DirectTV had exclusive rights to carry out of market games, I would have been screwed becasue I don't have DirectTV.
2. If DirectTV and the cable companies decide to carry the out of market game package, I will be screwed because the AT&T bundled cable provider is DISH NETWORK. And they haven't indicated any interest in matching DirectTV's offer.

Do you see the irony?

I can't believe my hopes for seeing any Cardinals games on TV (not involving the Padres, of course) rest with John friggin' Kerry.

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