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Thank you for your e-mail. We appreciate your feedback.
We currently offer 26 HD regional sports networks across the country in a live, game-only fashion. We support these broadcasts using a pool of “source” channels, a configuration that allows us to air more games than we have full-time bandwidth available. The issue is that when the schedule of simultaneous games is more than we have room to support within this pool, we are forced to drop pre & post game shows, portions of game broadcasts, or full game broadcasts. The times of the year when the schedules are so full to the point of being problematic are during MLB season, particularly in the early part when the NHL and NBA seasons (and early playoff rounds) are all going on simultaneously.
We take great care to accommodate as much of the live HD content available to us from the sports networks, but there are constraints. When we are in a position to have to drop or JIP games, we rotate through the networks/teams as much as possible so as not to affect any one group of viewers more than any other, but there is only so much we can do with regards to the long running or rain delayed games that run prior to the west coast games.
The constraints with which we are working are also what prevent us from airing additional non-live game content that some of the networks are producing. We would very much like to move towards full-time HD broadcasting for each of the regional sports networks that we carry, but that is not currently possible due to our current satellite capacity and the fact that the majority of these networks are not full-time HD themselves. As that changes and the industry matures in this aspect, we hope to be able to support much more completely, but we have made the business decision that the current economics do not justify this, particularly when it comes at the expense of other national HD channels that we could carry to our entire subscriber base.
