SportsTime Ohio - Coming to a TV near you?

As many of you may know, the Cleveland Indians have decided to launch their own TV station with the exclusive local rights to broadcast Cleveland Indians games. SportsTime Ohio is set to broadcast Tuesday's regular-season match-up of the Indians @ the Chicago White Sox, but the problem is thousands of Indians fans across the Northeast Ohio region will not have that channel as an option. On April 2nd, 2006, the official SportsTime Ohio Web site said,

"SportsTime Ohio is available to a majority of cable subscribers in the Cleveland area. Those subscribers include all Time Warner Cable customers along with Adelphia, Buckeye CableSystem, BTC Multimedia, CableSuite 541, Cox, Comcast, Dish, Doylestown Cable TV, City of Wadsworth, GLW Broadband, RTEC Communications and TSC Communications. SportsTime Ohio is not currently available on Direct TV or Dish Network."

But, according to a March 31st article on WKYC.com, DISH Network and SportsTime Ohio have indeed agreed to a deal to air Indians games to the satellite company's subscribers. But this still leaves Direct TV satellite subscribers as well as those with small, local cable companies, without the Cleveland Indians TV broadcasts.

SportsTime Ohio is set to broadcast 130 regular season Indians games as Fox Sports Ohio, the former station that Indians games could be found on, will no longer be broadcasting games for the Cleveland Indians. The broadcast team includes Mike Hegan, Rick Manning, John Sanders and Jim Donovan according to SportsTimeOhio.com. Meanwhile, now rival FSN Ohio has teamed up with 850 WKNR in Cleveland to broadcast "Cleveland Rants" on both TV and radio. WKNR.com claims that "with Cleveland Rants there is no managed message, just you on the phones and on television with YOUR take on the game and the team."

So what does all of this mean? Well, if you happen to have a cable of satellite provider who isn't on the SportsTime Ohio list then it means that you're out of luck. I guess it is back to the days of only listening to baseball games on the radio for me as my cable provider doesn't have a clue and is likely too small to be of concern to the people at SportsTime Ohio. But this could also mean good things for other sports in the state of Ohio as SportsTime Ohio will be looking to fill the rest of their time slots. According to their Web site, "plans are being developed to offer additional programming, geared specifically toward Ohio-area sports fans and the passion that makes the region a great sports community, to complement this expanded baseball schedule throughout the year." Ohio sports fans can only hope that this means a variety of MAC football and basketball games as well as Cleveland State (Horizon League), Ohio State (Big Ten) games and more.

So it seems that this SportsTime Ohio idea is a good one from the Indians team perspective. The New York Yankees seem to have made a few bucks from the YES Network, and as a fan of the Tribe (here comes my Reds fan jealousy again) I certainly hope this will bring in the additional revenue needed to make the Indians a bigger player in the free agency market each year. Lord knows Bud Selig and company will never make the necessary strides to ensure that every Major League Baseball team can be competitive each year, but I will save that topic for another day. I think the goal, from the Indians point-of-view, is to increase their revenue to better compete with the big boys, and I think the addition of SportsTime Ohio is a great idea. I just wish that my cable provider would pick it up...