No TV help for Dodgers fans
Justice department settles AT&T suit but doesn’t demand that DirecTV carry SportsNet LA.
The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday settled its lawsuit with AT&T, resolving claims that a highlevel DirecTV executive illegally colluded with other pay-TV companies in Southern California to block the rollout of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ cable sports channel in 2014.
As part of the settlement, which must still be approved by a judge, AT&T pledged to monitor its employees so they do not illegally share information about sensitive contract negotiations with competitors.
However, the government stopped short of demanding that AT&T, which acquired satellite television service DirecTV in 2015, begin carrying SportsNet LA, the Dodgers-owned channel.
That means the shutout of the Dodgers channel — which is about to enter its fourth season — will continue unless AT&T agrees on its own to carry the channel on its DirecTV and U-Verse pay-TV systems. Pay-TV companies have insisted that SportsNet LA is too expensive.
Thursday’s “settlement promotes competition among pay-television providers and prevents AT&T and DirecTV from engaging in illegal conduct that thwarts the competitive process,” Brent Snyder, acting assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said in a statement.
The government, which did not ask for a fine, said the settlement fully resolves the lawsuit it brought against AT&T in November. The suit alleged that DirecTV’s chief content officer, Dan York, was “the ringleader of a series of unlawful information exchanges” in 2014 with three competitors — Cox Communications Inc., Charter Communications Inc. and AT&T (before the company bought DirectTV).
The information sharing in early 2014 came as another competitor, Time Warner Cable, was struggling to win carriage in Southern California for SportsNet LA.
Charter Communications, which acquired Time Warner Cable last year, remains the only pay-TV company that offers the sports channel.
DirecTV’s refusal in 2014 to negotiate with Time Warner Cable upended efforts to secure broad carriage for the channel. The long stalemate prevented thousands of Dodger fans from seeing the team’s games during the final three seasons of legendary broadcaster Vin Scully’s long career with the Dodgers.
“We are pleased to have resolved this matter to the satisfaction of all parties,” AT&T said in a statement. A spokesman declined to comment further.
AT&T and DirecTV provide service to about 1.5 million subscriber homes in the Los Angeles region.
The Dodgers had hoped the suit would finally break the logjam that has prevented tens of thousands of Dodger fans from regularly watching its games on TV. The team did not have immediate comment.