I was happy to learn that an eleventh-hour deal was brokered, enabling cable TV subcribers to pay for out-of-market Major League Baseball games without subscribing to DirecTV.
It was a close one, but MLB and InDemand–a consortium that is owned by cable operators Comcast, Time Warner, and Cox–agreed Wednesday night to restore Extra Innings to their systems at a discounted cost of $159 for a short period (after a free preview through next week).
InDemand will make the package available to other cable operators like Cablevision and Charter, who must make their own deals. The Dish Network has not made a deal, saying that baseball’s terms were too costly for them.
The upshot is that, along with DirecTV, many of the major cable operators will continue to offer their out-of-market package because they agreed to carry the MLB Channel, which is to make its debut in 2009. I’m just happy that I’ll be able to watch Yankees games without a satellite dish when I move away from the New York market later this summer.