Mediacom's Pockets: Deep and Closed

As a St. Louis Cardinals fan that doesn't live in St. Louis, I was upset that Tuesday's (May 15) game against the Dodgers wasn't televised. Actually, it was televised on Fox Sports Mid West. However, I live in Springfield where the ONLY cable company is Mediacom. Mediacom did not broadcast the game.

Why not?

Well, Fox Sports Net is broadcasting 20 more Cardinals games this year than in previous years. This is a result of the over the air rights going from KPLR to KSDK. KSDK wasn't going to broadcast as many games so FSN picked up the slack. Now it costs money to broadcast these games. So FSN is going to push some of that cost to cable and satellite providers. According to this article in the Jefferson City News Tribune, 70% of the providers accepted the higher cost. Cheap skate Mediacom, of course, was not among them. Mediacom claimed that they would HAVE to pass the cost to the customer.

Here's what I don't get: The cost of Dish or some other satellite service is around the same as cable service. Yet, the satellites are able to provide the missing 20 games, but Mediacom can't? It's just one more example of the company's greed.

Another thing I don't like is that they are being coy about what remaining 19 games aren't going to be broadcast. Check out the info at the bottom of the Tribune article.

The next game of the 20 not scheduled to be broadcast by Mediacom is this Saturday. Goldman did not provide other specific games, saying there are four in June, seven in July, four in August and three in September.

Being the peristant jerk I am, I found the dates on the iNerd. I bet someone released this information but wasn't supposed to. Not that I would blame the "informant." Only Mediacom would feel the need to hide this sort of asinine info. These are the dates that the St. Louis Cardinals will NOT be broadcast on Mediacom (as of May 17, 2007). (Hat tip: Nexstar Broadcasting)

May 19 at Detroit 6:00pm
June 1 at Houston 7:00pm
June 8 Los Angeles Angels 7:00pm
June 9 Los Angeles Angels 6:00pm
June 18 Kansas City 7:00pm
July 3 Arizona 7:00pm
July 4 Arizona 6:00pm
July 6 San Francisco 7:00pm
July 7 San Francisco 6:00pm
July 24 Chicago 7:00pm
July 26 Chicago 7:00pm
July 27 Milwaukee 7:00pm
August 6 San Diego 7:00pm
August 7 San Diego 7:00pm
August 8 San Diego 7:00pm
August 9 San Diego 7:00pm
September 17 Philadelphia 7:00pm
September 18 Philadelphia 7:00pm
September 20 Houston 7:00pm

Just look at those dates. No Cardinals baseball on July 4! Black out of a WHOLE series with the Padres! Black out of two consecutive Cubs games! Now that I think about it, I may see why they don't want people to see these dates. Keep the masses in the dark. (Thank Google for blogging and crawling web search.)

If I didn't rent, I would have satellite in a heartbeat. Most sports bars in Springfield have Mediacom cable. A couple use satellite so I guess I'll be patronizing them more unless this gets resolved. I think that the more people know about this, the more pressure Mediacom will be under. I notified the Tribune in of the actual dates and sent some emails to the Springfield News-Leader on the dates. Apparently, they were planning on doing a story but couldn't get any info from Mediacom (imagine that!). Hopefully the dates will be printed in the paper and people can start their seemingly annual calls to Mediacom threatening to cancel their subscriptions.

I can only hope.