Los Angeles @Dodgers: Out of Sight Is Out of Mind

The Dodgers have never been my favorite home team, but they had a very enjoyable season last year and I was looking forward to 2014. And then along came that cursed Time-Warner cable contract. Now 70 percent of the greater L.A. market can't get the Dodgers on their cable box. It's definitely hurting the team.

Here's Jim Peltz, at the Los Angeles Times, "Dodgers have faded from view on TV; will they fade from fans' hearts?"

And from Bill Plaschke, there's plenty of blame to go around, "Dodgers are out of sight, could become out of mind":

This is the worst season to be a Dodgers fan thanks to Time Warner #SportsNetFaiLA

— Taryn L (@InTransit74) May 12, 2014

The issue has been well-documented and there is clearly enough blame for everyone, greed by some, gluttony by others, villains everywhere.

The Dodgers are the biggest bad guys because, by taking $8.35 billion from Time Warner Cable and insisting on starting their own channel — SportsNet LA — they made it nearly impossible for that channel to find distribution at a price that Time Warner Cable could accept. The Dodgers could have signed a new deal with Prime Ticket for slightly less money but with a much higher probability that pay-TV operators would have continued carrying the existing channel. They would not have had their own channel, but at least that channel would have been seen.

The next villain is Time Warner Cable, which seriously overpaid, perhaps because it seriously misjudged the Los Angeles fan culture and thought this transition would be similar to the quick implementation of the Lakers channel a couple of years ago. Wrong. The Dodgers are not as big as the Lakers, and the Dodgers fans are not the Lakers fans, who lost their minds and used their wallets and essentially forced the pay-TV operators to carry the channel after only a few missed games. There is no such mass fleeing from the likes of DirecTV. The onus is now on Time Warner Cable to sell what is essentially an overpriced product.

"We sold the rights to a gigantic corporation, it's their job to market the rights and get the distribution," Guber said in the recent interview. "We are not happy that they haven't been able to get the full distribution in our own market that they promised. That's their job. They made the bet."

The final villains are the pay-TV operators who have shunned the Dodgers, if only because they are still charging consumers the same prices as last season when they carried the Dodgers. The contracts are surely murky and complicated but, bottom line, I no longer receive the Dodgers on my television yet my pay-TV operator has yet to give me a refund.

"It's unfortunate most providers have not yet decided to give it to our fans even though they're still charging them for last year's Dodgers coverage," said Stan Kasten, Dodgers president, in an interview Saturday.

It's all unfortunate, such that during the last month I heard several respected local sports authorities wonder whether the Clippers had actually become bigger than the Dodgers. It sounds crazy. It will never happen. But right now, which team has more buzz? There was also fallout felt when Magic Johnson surfaced as a possible new owner of the Clippers. A year ago, the support for his Guggenheim group would have been unquestioned. Now, not so much, with people wondering if that would mean the Clippers would also soon disappear.

If you own a sports team in Southern California, you can refurbish a lineup and a stadium and championship hopes, but none of that matters if that team is not on television. Period.

Or so it would seem.