Sunday, February 05, 2006

Mets on DirecTV

Although I haven't been able to locate the original article online, Kranepool posted that the NYPost's Phil Mushnick is reporting that the Mets' new TV network, SNY, has reached an agreement with DirecTV.

No, this would seem to be extremely good news for me, seeing as I have DirecTV and I am a big Mets fan. Especially when in years past MSG, FSNY and YES network were all part of DirecTV's sports package, allowing viewers to get all of those channels and more, for just $12 a month. It would stand to reason that SNY will now be a part of that sports pack right?

When we moved down to NC in November 2004, we moved into an apartment. Mind you, this apartment was beyond my wildest imagination for what an apartment could be. A two-bedroom ground floor spread with everything you could want - tennis courts, fitness center, a pool, for just $700 a month. It was great, considering the 500 square foot sh*thole we lived in on Long Island with a higher rent.

Anyway, the first thing I did when we moved was call DirecTV to come and install a dish.The only problem was that we weren't allowed to bore holes into the property, so I had to settle for Time Warner Cable until we were ready to buy a house. Now, I thought Cablevision was about the worst company in the world until I started dealing with TWC. These guys are even worse, believe it or not! So I suffered with Time Warner until May, when we bought our house and I was finally able to get at DirecTV and, I expected, my Mets.

The guy comes and installs the dish, and lo and behold, Mike and The MadDog show up on my screen on the YES network. I tune over to FSNY and talentless twit Fran Healey is asking dumb questions to Willie Randolph. Sweet!

My joy quickly came to a halt that night however, when I tuned in to watch a game and there was nothing but black on the screen. I called up the folks over at DirecTV and after talking with a bunch of schmucks for two hours was able to surmise that for my $12 I got all the programming that YES and MSG had to offer, EXCEPT FOR GAMES! No, to get the games I had to subscribe to the ExtraInnings package for 40 clams a month, which shows about 50 games a week, without guarantee that the Mets would be on any given night. I balked.

Instead, I subscribed to MLB.com's radio package, which for $15 A YEAR I got to listen to the home or away radio broadcast of every game of every team in the country. A couple times (mostly when Pedro was pitching) I even plunked down a couple bucks for MLBTV.com and saw the game on the old laptop.

This season I'm going to give in and buy tea ExtraInnings package. I heard about a scam where I could tell DirecTV I moved back to New York, and they would start sending me the New York channels, but I haven't found anyone who has actually done this, and I also read something about "spot beams" or something, where the channels are only directed at certain regions of the country... I don't know what to believe, really, but I give up. Those bastards are getting my dough this year.

Enjoy the football game today everyone. I'm rooting for Amstel Light, and for Keith Richards NOT to have a wardrobe malfunction.

Pitchers and Catchers report in less than two weeks.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm in the unusual and unenviable position of living in NY and not knowing when or if I'll be able to get my Mets TV fix. And I don't like it one bit.

I'm preparing myself to wage full-on war with my cable company - SusCom - over the SportsNet NY situation. I e-mailed their customer service the other night to see if they planned to add SNY to their channel lineup in time for the start of the season (preferrably in time for spring training), and was told that they were in the process of being purchased by Comcast so it's unlikely that any channels will be added until the acquisition is complete. And yet, strangely, they just recently added the freakin' Soap Opera Network.

One one hand, it's good that it's Comcast taking over since they own a stake in the network and will surely carry it, but on the other hand, having endured countless ownership changes in my local cable company, I know that the transition is rarely a smooth or speedy one.

Since I have tickets to Opening Day, these dopes have until the second game on April 5th to get this thing sorted out, or it's war!

Anonymous said...

I came across your site while googling for a tv schedule for Mets spring training games. I dont know if this will help you, but i faced the same dilema as you when i moved to Florida last spring and i found a solution. I subscribe to dish network through a local vendor who told me how to do it. I simply give a NY/NJ/CT address to dish network who sends me the satelite signal for that area. I receive all of the local NY stations including FSNY and MSG and watched 162 mets games last year for free (included in my basic package). The only downside is that i receive all of the local NY stations and none of the local Florida station. I can tell you what the temperature is in central park but havent a clue if there is a hurricane approaching florida (a small price to pay for having Keith Hernandez and Tom Seaver doing color/play by play on my 162 games on FSNY/MSG/Ch 11.
Let's Go Mets!

Brewster Mom's Blog said...

I urge all of you in the Suscom coverage area to contact their corporate director of operations for the cable tv division -
James Sweeney 717-852-2200 - if enough of us are heard he will reconsider adding SNY until the "comcast takeover"!