fs2685 said:
That's why I'm reluctant to get EI. I had it the first year I got Dish. Yankee and Mets were always blacked out, taking away two potential games most nights. I still don't understand why my local cable has YES, MSG, and FSNY, yet Dish considers me out of network. My other issue is that I'm a Phillies fan and their home games aren't shown on EI.
Philly games carried on Comcast Sportsnet Philadelphia are blacked out due to something called the "terrestrial loophole". When satellite first got started the FCC and Congress decided to make sure the competitive field was level by forcing regional sports nets to make their feeds available to any who wanted them for a fee within competitive parameters. HOWEVER, for some reason they excluded sports networks which were delivered over landlines. Prism (since absorbed by Comcast), a closed circuit channel from philly was the only one that had need of the loophole as everone else used satellite delivery to the headend of the cable companies. Comcast has exploited this ever since and ensured that the fourth largest market in the country has a lower DBS penetration than average due to their ability to keep Flyers, 76ers, and Phillies fans from watching their teams. This explains the strange setup where people in Philadelphia get blacked out of Yankee and Met games since they get MSG and FoxSports NY assigned to them as RSNs.
It's a dumb rule, but it won't change until enough people bitch to their congresspeople about it. Since most Philadelphians seem to have just ignored DBS entirely, there isn't a huge upswell of protests to change the status quo.