No Fall Classic For Cablevision Subscribers

News Corp's Fox 5 and Cablevision still have not settled their dispute over a new contract and News Corp continues to hold their programming, including the MLB World Series, hostage. The Dolans and Cablevision continue to play hardball and now some 3 million Cablevision subscribers across New York and Philadelphia are left to scramble to watch the Fall Classic, including yours truly.

I received an email from Cablevision last night, at around 6:30 PM, an hour before Fox 5's TV coverage of Game 1 started across the country, informing me that if I registered at MLB.com and paid $9.99 Cablevision would refund me the money by crediting my bill. I could watch the World Series right on MLB.com. Sounded good to me at the time, and so I immediately registered and paid the ten bucks. It was a no brainer! Unfortunately there were a few drawbacks. First of all; it turns out that MLB.com is partially owned by Fox. So the money I paid, which Cablevision promised to return to me, is going to News Corp anyway! The other major problem, for me, is that watching the game streamed on MLB.com sucks! They give you many camera angles to choose from, but you don't get any stats on the screen, nor any pitch count, and the picture keeps freezing up. So I wound up paying more attention to the Knicks game on my TV (broadcast on MSG Network) than the World Series freezing up on my laptop. What a bummer! At least the Knicks won. Oh well. I guess I don't have the right to see the Fall Classic this year. I only hand over close to $140.00 per month to Cablevision; why should I be able to watch what I pay for? I long for the time that things were simpler, when televisions were hooked up to rabbit ears and analog signals came over the air waves. It's the price we pay (or don't pay if you're Cablevision) for living a digital life! I don't know what I'm gonna do for the Jet's game on Sunday against Green Bay. Maybe I'll just go to my neighborhood bar and watch the game with all the other low lives who don't have Verizon Fios. Play ball!