Comcast and District officials opened negotiations Thursday to get more Nationals games on television.
More than 1 million District-area residents subscribe to Comcast cable. But Comcast officials are angry that the rights to Nationals’ broadcasts were given to Orioles owner Peter Angelos and have blacked the team out.
Critics, who range from U.S. congressmen to local politicians, are afraid that keeping the Nats off the air will undermine the teams’ efforts to build up its fanbase and squander years of work bringing baseball back to the District.
D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams signed a bill that ordered Comcast to put the Nationals on the air by Wednesday night.
The deadline came and went, which gives the District the right to review Comcast’s operating license. If things don’t go well, it could mean the end of Comcast in D.C.
Despite the seemingly harsh wording of the bill, the District’s front man in the negotiations spoke softly Thursday.
“Any time you negotiate a deal, you just sit down and work together and try to map out a road map,” said J. Carl Wilson, general counsel for the D.C. Office of Cable Television and Telecommunications.
Wilson said the negotiations are likely to be drawn out. Does that mean Nats will, in the old sports cliche, wait til next year?
“I don’t know,” Wilson said. But “I’m a big baseball fan, and I want to watch the Nationals, like, yesterday.”
Williams’ spokesman, Vincent Morris, said that the mayor was “frustrated” by Comcast’s refusal, but deferred further questions to the Office of Cable Television.
Comcast officials couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday.
When he met the media earlier this month, new Nationals President Stan Kasten said that “the only option” was to get the team on the air and promised to do whatever that took. Kasten, through a spokesman, refused comment Thursday.
