The Portland Trail Blazers played yet another dramatic overtime game Monday night, with the Denver Nuggets’ Allen Iverson nailing a jumper with less than a second left to win the game.
Too bad myself and many other Oregonians couldn’t see it.
Portland’s new deal with Comcast Sports Net as the anchor of its Northwest channel is, strangely, a good situation for the team. The Blazers receive more focus than they did on the Seattle-based (and biased) Fox Sports Net Northwest, and the great announcer team of Mike Barrett and Mike Rice is retained. I have no problem with the Comcast presentation.
But the house I live in doesn’t get Comcast – instead we have DirecTV. Of course, as many in the media have already written (including the Oregonian’s John Canzano), Comcast has not yet negotiated a deal to release the channel onto DirecTV, Dish Network, or any other cable or satellite provider that serves the Northwest. Well, they will eventually be on Verizon’s new FiOS TV setup in the Portland area (it’s been announced but the introduction is delayed), but that isn’t much of a help in Eugene.
That 55 games of Oregon’s only pro sports franchise aren’t available outside of the Willamette Valley (where Comcast operates in the state) is nothing short of a crime. Fans on the coast or in eastern Oregon have their hands tied – they don’t even have the option to switch away from their current provider to Comcast like I theoretically could. And though those areas don’t have the population base like the Portland metro area does, a large chunk of the state’s population lives outside of Comcast’s area of service. How many Trail Blazer fans has this annoyed?
This has infuriated me all season, with winter break with my parents (and their Comcast setup) offering only a small reprieve. Even more annoying is that, in typical male fashion, my house gets a ton of channels on DirecTV – pretty much every sports and movie channel is beamed to my TV, including dozens of regional sports networks from around the nation. On the Martin Luther King Day holiday – which had plenty of NBA matches on the slate – I could watch games from the Bay Area, Utah, Houston, and the East Coast, but because Comcast Sports Net NW is having a pissing contest with the TV providers, I couldn’t watch my Trail Blazers.
Of course, in my situation, the NBA’s blackout regulations only add to the fury. Monday’s game against Denver was on both their regional provider and NBA TV; however, because I apparently can get Comcast Sports Net in Eugene, both of those options were blacked out. The Atlanta affiliate that shows Hawks games did the same thing on MLK Day. Blackouts for home-region teams also extend to the NBA League Pass, which means that fans in eastern Oregon who physically cannot get CSN NW also can’t watch the Blazers.
The sad thing is, this is all brought on by Comcast’s greed. The only possible situation I can envision is Comcast overestimating their new channel’s value, and the other television providers saying, “Screw that.” It’s not a “Comcast cable versus satellite” thing – I get Comcast Sports Net affiliates from Washington, D.C., Chicago and Boston here in Eugene – it’s a “Comcast versus providers” thing.
And a “Comcast hates Trail Blazer fans” thing. All I want to do is watch my team, Comcast; stop screwing that up.
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