Notes from a podcast out of Baltimore with an interview with John Angelos. Terrible interviewers, but Angelos had some interesting comments,
http://bmoreopinionated.libsyn...
They asked him three main questions
1) Will MASN carry more local programming?
2) Why aren't Os and Nats always on the same MASN channel?
3) Why won't the Nats honor the contract they signed?
Before answering those questions Anglos spent a couple minutes talking about how fair MASN is to both teams and that no one has claimed they are not fair: "Network never designed to focus on one team over the other". That there is no competition between the Nats and Os, they are both competing with other sports. Which seemed to come out of left field
but I think that MASN has a concern to show no signs of favoritism towards the Os in order to avoid giving the Lerners can cause to void the contract.
His other Responses:
1) Angelos stated that MASN covers a lot of local college basketball and other sports, he did not mention how much less non-game coverage there is on MASN as opposed to CSN, he did not mention how much lower the production values are on MASN. He continued that MASN plans on adding more off season MLB coverage but doesn't know if they can get
the ratings or sponsorship to justify the expense (how then does CSN survive?).
2) Angelos said that putting one team on MASN 1 and the other on MASN 2 would cause the team on MASN 2 to suffer in the ratings. That they considered putting the Nats on MASN 1 to give them a jump start. But that the network would do better with the Os on MASN 1. That to be fair they alternated. Complete BS, overflow networks (ESPN 2 and CSN Plus) don't do as well because people can't find the channel, with the Nats on MASN 2 it would be like both teams had their own primary channel, ratings would improve for both teams because fans could find the games they want to watch. His quotes: "MASN has a better second channel situation than a lot of networks" and "Unfair to one team or the other to always feature one team on the primary channel, because of ratings issues"
His one really interesting point was that MASN has considered alternating channels by year - which would be more than fine.
3) First Angelos corrected the interviewer that the MASN deal was signed with MLB not the Nats. He referred to the dispute as a blip, an unfortunate side track. Angelos went into length on how the Os had groomed the DC market, blah blah blah, that 25-35% of attendence was from DC area. That in 2005 they were already planning on MASN in 2007 when CSN contract expired. That this was a dispute over formulas that will soon be resolved.
He's right about the 35% of attendance, the Os are in 1st and their attendance is terrible. Wah. Although he was nice not to mention that the Nats ratings are half of what the Os are getting as called out in the MASN motions. What I can't figure out is why the Nats get such good attendance and there are so many people wearing Nats gear around town but the ratings are terrible and you still have to ask twice to get the game turned on at half the bars around here.