Time Warner Cable SportsNet LA on Thursday announced that it will be available to Charter customers beginning Tuesday, via the carrier's most widely distributed tier of service. The RSN's Spanish-language game telecasts and its Korean-language SAP also will be available to Charter customers (SportsNet LA). In L.A., Meg James noted the addition of the RSN on Charter ends "a 14-month TV blackout that's left thousands of baseball fans fuming" without access to Dodgers games. Charter has "some 300,000 subscribers" in the L.A. market. The move "comes less than two weeks after Charter unveiled" a nearly $57B deal to acquire TWC, "which until now had been the only major pay-TV operator" to carry SportsNet LA. Charter's shift "represents the first break in a more than yearlong log jam." Still, "other pay TV providers -- including DirecTV, Dish Network, AT&T U-verse and Verizon FiOS -- have not budged" (L.A. TIMES, 6/5). In Palm Springs, Matt Solinsky notes with the addition of Charter, "nearly 2 million homes in Southern California now will have access to SportsNet LA, perhaps putting pressure on the holdouts to add SportsNet LA or risk losing subscribers." DirecTV alone in SoCal has "more than 1.2 million subscribers" (DESERTSUN.com, 6/4). In California, Michael Lev noted Charter will be "the first major distributor" to carry SportsNet LA other than TWC, which operates the Dodgers-owned RSN. SportsNet LA launched in February '14 and has "a reported monthly fee of about $5 per subscriber" (ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, 6/5).
