Dodgers broadcasts continue to "go unseen by the majority of their fans," and there is "no end in sight to the dispute between DirecTV and Charter Communications, which inherited the mess when it bought Time Warner Cable," according to Bill Shaikin of the L.A. TIMES. SportsNet LA, now in its fourth season without major distribution in the L.A. market, has been "unavailable in millions of homes in Southern California that don’t have" TWC's Spectrum service. The average SportsNet LA broadcast this season has "attracted 79,000 households." The 10-game KTLA-CW package "averaged 378,000 households, including the SportsNet LA viewers -- an audience almost five times as large as the one for games aired only on the Dodgers’ channel." The team in '13 "averaged 154,000 households per game" in their last year on Prime Ticket, a channel "available on all major cable and satellite systems in Southern California." The average this year "reflects a 49% drop, but that’s up from the average of 57,000 households two years ago." The Dodgers despite playing in the second-largest market in the U.S. "ranked 15th among the 29 U.S. teams in the number of households that viewed games" last season, directly behind the smaller-market Pirates and Orioles. The Yankees and Mets "led the way, each with an average audience close to three times larger than what the Dodgers had." Meanwhile, Angels games air on FS West, and they "still attract fewer viewers than the Dodgers" at an average of 47,000 households this year (L.A. TIMES, 6/18).
