This isn’t about the Sabres, not directly, but about the cable television industry, which now exends into phone companies, the internet, and more. Most Buffalonians who follow the Sabres have heard that MSG might get dumped from Time Warner Cable after the end of the year (2 weeks) if the two parties don’t come to an agreement. The last time this came up, MSG was gone for 2 months. Considering there’s also been other channels that have not been on the air for various periods (including missing Bills games because of a similar problem with CBS), I’m about to the point where I’m going to drop cable TV altogether. We’ve been hanging on by a live sports related thread for a couple of years now thanks to hockey, if the main channel for that is gone, I literally have no reason to stay on. I have a Blu-Ray player that can connect to Hulu and Netflix, tablets and phones which can do the same.
That being said, I find it very silly that MSG wants to up the per-subscriber charge into ESPN’s range. The percentage of TWC’s subscriber base that regularly watches MSG (even in NYC for the Knicks/Rangers) has to be quite a bit smaller than the percentage that what ESPN. Especially during baseball season.
Nice coincidence, considering all of this, FiOS will now have MSG in HD. Just in case any of you had any reason coming up to switch. FYI.