Man, this is fascinating stuff, for a bunch of reasons (both on the field and off). These TV deals are everything to franchises these days, which is obviously why Angelos fought so hard for the Nationals' rights[...]
Angelos didn't fight hard because of the telly money...he fought hard because he didn't want the Nats relocating here at all and is fighting for the franchise's obliteration.
Here's the official take on the matter, from the MASN site (
http://www.masnsports.com/masn_news_information/about-masn.html):
'Since at least 1981, the Orioles have had exclusive rights to the 7-state television territory. In 2004, Major League Baseball announced the relocation of the Montreal Expos to Washington, D.C. The Orioles objected to the relocation of the Expos to within 35 miles of Oriole Park in Baltimore. Among other things, the Expos/Nationals had no television territory within which to telecast its games. In today's world, no baseball franchise could viably exist without a television territory and television rights revenues. The Orioles, the Nationals and Major League Baseball all understood this reality.
'The Orioles appreciated that a baseball team in the nation's capital needed to be on television and agreed to share its exclusive television territory with the Nationals. Major League Baseball and the Nationals agreed to grant to TCR (MASN) the exclusive rights to telecast all of the available Nationals games. Since MASN already had the rights to certain Orioles games in 2005 and all available Orioles games in 2007, MASN became the home of the Washington Nationals and continues to be home to Orioles telecasts.
'MASN believes every fan in the region should be able to watch the Nationals and Orioles on MASN, which is why we have made fair offers to every cable and satellite distributor in the television territory. Currently you can find MASN on Antietam, Armstrong, Atlantic Broadband, Bay Country, Broadstripe, Charter, Comcast, Cox, DirecTV, Dish, Easton, Giles Craig, HarronMetrocast, KUHN, Mediacom, MI Connections, Ntelos, OpenBand, RCN, Reds Cable, Spruce Knob Seneca Rocks Telco, TriCounty Telecom, Verizon, WDCW-TV (Nationals) and WJZ-TV (Orioles).'
...so bloody magnanimous of them.