I live two hours away, so I can only see live Nats games on MASN. The blackout rule is only there to protect the rightsholder (in our case, MASN) from anyone else being able to show its particular team's games in their designated area. MASN paid about $26 million to the Nationals this year to show all their games, and part of that deal was that no one else can show them within their territorry. That's how MASN was able to get all these cable companies to carry the channel. The "blackout rule" really doesn't have as much to do with us living close to the game as much as it does the potential TV audience. That's why away games are included.
In many cases, a certain team's blackout territory can be ridiculous. Check out this map at http://www.maurybrown.com/images/MLBTerritories.jpg
It's a little outdated, but the Nationals territory is shared with the Orioles. Toronto's territory includes all of Canada. The territory for Seattle includes all of Alaska (making it the largest in the US), and Hawaii is shared by the three southern California teams. The smallest territory belongs to Philadelphia. All of the territories are ridiculously large, but we are in one of the smaller ones. All of them overlap, and a couple areas include the territories for six teams.
i thought the blackout rule was to get more fans into the stadium instead of sitting at home watching on TV, when games are sold out the blackout rule dosent apply like redskins games on fox every sunday
