As the deadline for Comcast Corporation and YES Network to reach a new cable retransmission agreement draws near, there is a chance that Comcast subscribers could soon be unable to access local broadcasts of New York Yankees baseball and Brooklyn Nets basketball. Throughout the weekend of Yankees games on YES Network, the company ran messages encouraging Comcast users to switch to a different cable provider.
From there, network president and chief executive officer Jon Litner delineated the matter in the broadcast booth, expressing how the company was demanding YES Network moves to a more expensive tier while it keeps SportsNet New York, of which it has partial ownership, in cheaper packages. The matter was a topic of discussion on the Monday morning edition of Boomer & Gio on WFAN, during which co-host Boomer Esiason emphasized that there is a “very good chance” that YES Network will no longer be available on Comcast by the end of the week.
In response, co-host Gregg Giannotti explained that he had seen this occur with MSG Networks and Comcast, presumably referring to when the company dropped the content in October 2021. Although most of these disputes end up being resolved, the two entities have not reached another deal since that time, leaving viewers without access to various local sporting events and other programming. MSG Networks and Optimum reached a new carriage agreement after a 52-day dispute that started last year, restoring access to the content for an estimated 1 million cable television customers.
“I know every side’s got their argument, and I hate getting in the middle of this and saying, ‘Who’s this?’ and, ‘Who’s that?’… and I know that the fans are the ones that end up getting screwed,” Esiason explained. “In this case, I guess if Comcast has a part of SNY and they’re putting it on their basic cable package — I’m not a Comcast user, so I don’t know about this, but I’m kind of being reading through this, it sounds like SNY is on the basic cable package for Comcast, but Comcast wants to charge people for YES, $20 a month or $240 obviously for the 10-month season or, I guess, for the next 10 months.”
Giannotti recalled that Time Warner Cable was available in New York City before the service was rebranded to Spectrum by Charter Communications in 2016. Esiason added that there are a variety of cable providers in the metropolis, such as Optimum, Comcast and Verizon. Furthermore, he remarked at the speed of his fiber optic internet from Optimum, something that is becoming more essential as cord cutting continues and people look to stream their television content.
“But we all know what the issue is,” Esiason added. “One of the app carriers has one of them, and the other app carrier doesn’t have it, and to interface between the two is a pain in the a**. That’s why the MLB App – at least if they can get all the kinks out of it – actually works the best.”
Esiason averred that there needs to be consolidation at some point as consumers grow with the teams who are trying to figure out how to adapt to the media ecosystem in real time. Giannotti shared that he uses the Rocket App to determine how much he is spending on television services, and he remarked that the Disney bundle featuring Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ was the best value.
“By the way, the other thing, what they do when you’re subscribing to these things,” Esiason outlined, “you’ll get an email – I don’t know, they’ll usually send it out on a Thursday night, Friday it seems like – letting you know that there’s a $2.10 increase to your bill.”
“Oh yeah, I love that. YouTube TV smacked everybody over the head. It was more than that. It was like a $10 or $12 increase,” Giannotti replied. “They were like, ‘Here you go. We’re just going to ruin a good thing here. Everybody was switching to us because we had the cheapest, best service, and now we’re going to ruin it.’”
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