Editorial: How much is too much to watch the Dodgers?

Days before the Dodgers’ season opener, Time Warner Cable has thrown out the first pitch. The cable TV operator cut by 30% the price it’s asking rival cable and satellite TV providers to pay for SportsNet LA, the channel with the exclusive rights to the Dodgers’ games. That’s very good news for the many Dodgers fans who have missed two seasons of the team on TV because their cable or satellite TV providers balked at the fee Time Warner demanded (reportedly $4.90 per subscriber per month). DirecTV, Cox, AT&T and Verizon chose not to buy in, leaving many fans in the area blacked out. Currently, the only households in Southern California that have access to the channel are the 1.8 million subscribers to Time Warner or Charter Communications, which started carrying the channel last June after it announced its bid to acquire Time Warner.

It’s encouraging to see Time Warner offer the channel at a price closer to the industry average for regional sports networks. The deal would be good for just one year, however. “This is a historic season; we can all agree on that,” said Time Warner spokesman Andrew Fegyveresi, referring to legendary announcer Vin Scully’s final season in the broadcast booth as the reason the company has offered this discount to all area cable providers. Other reports say that the cable giant has been losing money and needs to bring in more fees.

The larger problem is that the economics behind this bitter two-year stalemate are a mess. Time Warner Cable agreed to pay $8.35 billion, according to valuations by the Dodgers, for the rights to distribute SportsNet LA. That staggering sum helped justify the record $2.15 billion that Guggenheim Baseball Management plunked down in 2012 to buy the Dodgers. Time Warner paid so much, however, the deal won’t succeed unless pay-TV providers agree to pay hefty fees for the channel.

Yet with rising monthly fees fomenting a growing consumer revolt, cable providers are reluctant to pass on the cost of the expensive Dodgers channel to all their subscribers, including the ones who have no interest in baseball. And offering SportsNet LA a la carte is a non-starter — Time Warner has reportedly ruled it out, and besides, the cost per month would have to be prohibitively high to raise the amounts Time Warner is demanding.

Inflated by huge payments for exclusive broadcasting rights, the price of sports channels has become unsustainable. Time Warner’s struggles to sell SportsNet LA are a sign pay-TV providers and team owners need to change their expectations for what cable subscribers will pay for programming — while there still are cable subscribers.

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