The Phillies-Braves game was blacked out for me too and I also live in a zip code that, according to MLB.com should only have Pittsburgh Pirates games blacked out. I called Dish and the 'support' person kept apologizing, but offered no reasonable explaination as to why it was blacked out. He even said that, according to his information, only Pirates games should be blacked out. After I got off the phone, I wrote to
ceo@echostar.com and here is the response:
Thanks for the email. I can certainly understand your frustration, but
DISH Network is not at fault for programming blackouts. A sporting event
may be blacked-out when one broadcaster purchases the rights to an
event, and other broadcasters do not have the rights to broadcast that
event. The broadcasters who cannot show the event will be blacked-out.
Here are a couple of examples of how sporting events can be blacked out.
National blackouts occur when a local channel, or a Regional Sports
Network, purchases the rights to the event. In these cases, the event
will not be available to any channel that is outside of that region. See
additional details below.
Regional market blackouts occur when a national channel such as ESPN,
ESPN2, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, TNT, etc., purchases the rights to the event.
In these cases, the event will not be available to any regional channel
within that team's territory unless a regional channel purchases the
rights to the event. See additional details below.
I hope that this helps clarify the situation. Please let me know if you
have any other questions.