Spectrum Sports Net (Lakers) and Spectrum Sports Net LA (Dodgers) are 2 seperate channels/services from the Spectrum Sports offerings. In other words, if MVPD's want the Lakers or the Dodgers, they have to pay the seperate HIGH price to get EACH of them becaue neither is part of the Spectrum Sports offerings.
Yeah, it would be nice if Lakers and Dodgers would be included but TWC is committed to giving both the Lakers and Dodgers so much money, that if those teams were included, it would pull in less money than the current seperate channels set-up. Bottom line is TWC made a financially bad deal with mostly the Dodgers (Lakers carried on all but Dish, I think?), although the Lakers channel was offered at LOWER than originally needed for it to make economic sense, I think, based on their success with the Lakers, becaue virtually none of the OTHER MVPD's will pay for the Dodger channel, and TWC MUST pay the Dodgers what was promised regardless of how well or poorly Sports Net LA performs, and it is not doing well enough to pay for itself.
I suppose the new Charter could just have Sports Net LA (or both channels) go bankrupt and just get out of it. It seems the ONLY way to get out of the contract and not shovel money into a furnace for an agreement that makes no economic sense. And no! If either services were offerd A la Carte to each subscriber, it would still be a huge financial LOSS. The only way the economies work on these channels is if nearly every MVPD offers it at either BASIC or one tier above level, and that aint happening with Net LA. TWC greatly mis-calculated thinking that all MVPD's would have no choice but to take the channel or face the wrath of sports fans, but the ugly truth is that MOST people in this country (suprisingly?) DO NOT watch nor really care about such sports in general nor the teams.