Just in time for the college football season, Time Warner Cable is adding five additional Pac-12 channels to Los Angeles area channel lineup. Time Warner Cable, Dish Network and AT&T U-Verse all currently offer Pac-12 channels that carry UCLA and USC college football games.
The new channels are regionally focused: Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Colorado/Utah, and Northern California (UC Berkeley and Stanford). TWC already offered two Pac-12 channels in its standard package: a national channel and one focused on the two L.A. college teams.
TWC’s biggest competitor in LA—DirecTV—currently doesn’t carry Pac-12 channels, noted the LA Times.
DirecTV and Time Warner Cable have been stuck in a seven-month stalemate over carriage of the SportsNet LA, the Dodgers television channel.
Although the Dodgers own the channel SportsNet LA, Time Warner Cable exclusively distributes it. The company has been unable to negotiate carriage agreements with other pay-TV providers in the area, including DirecTV, Dish, Cox Communications and Charter Communications.
That means about 70% of the LA DMA is unable to regularly see Dodgers games.
TWC said it would agree to arbitration after six congressmen led by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) sent a letter suggesting the move to DirecTV CEO Michael White and Time Warner Cable CEO Rob Marcus. Sherman’s letter comes one day after Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Los Angeles) wrote a letter to the FCC asking it to mediate an agreement between Time Warner Cable and other providers.
