Thursday, March 23, 2006

SportsTime Ohio And Dish Network?

Several alert readers pointed us to word that Dish Network has started uplinking the SportsTime Ohio feed behind the scenes, but is not yet offering it to subscribers.

The move is pointed out on this unofficial Dish Network Channel Chart, where folks who have access to diagnostic equipment track the pre-launch moves of Dish Network's channels. To wit:

"Sports Time Ohio, new home to the Cleveland Indians is now listed on channel 431 on tp 24 at 110°. This location is generally used by part-time channels. This is not visible or available to subscribers at this time (ANON)"

Does this mean Dish Network subscribers are about to get the new Indians-owned regional sports network? Not necessarily. We hear that Dish has uplinked other potential networks in the background in the past, only to pull them down when negotiations fall apart. (We understand that the "YES" network, the New York Yankees-owned RSN, has been through this for a couple of years now. Dish has never actually carried YES, but has moved it on and off the non-visible satellite lineup.)

Still, it may signal that Dish hopes that an agreement is near, so it's probably good news that they're at least testing it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

When WTAM announced the Cox and Comcast deal they added the STO and Dish were close to a deal.

Anonymous said...

What sort of slap would it be to Directv if Dish had the Channel and Directv didn't. It is usually the other way around.

Anonymous said...

I bet STO is giving different prices to each company. Why wouldn't I be surprised if STO gave a Dish a good deal so that they could turn around and try to give DirecTV bad PR. "It wasn't too expensive for Dish."

I still think STO is ripping off cable companies.

Anonymous said...

STO is trying to do what NYC could do all along. You need a large market to do this, you can't make a large market by getting the channel first, it's the cart before the horse, and us fans pay the price. Everything was fine with FSNOH.