Comcast, Time Warner See Mets Deal

Time Warner (TWX) and Comcast (CMCSA) are playing ball with the New York Mets.

The two cable operators, along with a company formed by the baseball team, announced plans Tuesday to launch a New York City regional sports network in 2006. The new network, yet unnamed, would feature up to 125 regular season games from the Mets, along with other programming yet undisclosed.

The deal spotlights both the economic promise of regional sports programming and the soap-operatic nature of the regional sports business in the New York metropolitan area and elsewhere. It also shows continuing collaboration between the big cable rivals, who as recently as last month were reported to be teaming up for a possible bid on assets of bankrupt Adelphia.

With sports, both local and national, consistently ranking among the most popular programming on cable TV, programmers have regularly sparred with cable TV operators over pricing in recent years. Operators complain that sports channels are charging unconscionably high prices for games, while those rightsholders -- often owned in part by the sports teams themselves -- insist they are charging prices commensurate with their value to cable TV households.

In fact, the Mets themselves were at the center of one public spat this summer. In early August, Time Warner pulled from its systems two programming networks, both of which broadcast Mets games, in a dispute over pricing. Those networks -- Fox Sports Net New York and the MSG Network, both of which are owned by New York-based operator Cablevision (CVC) -- were restored to Time Warner systems later in the month.

A Time Warner Cable spokesman says the company and Cablevision have reached an "interim" agreement in the matter, and that further negotiations are ongoing.

For its part, Cablevision said, "MSG Networks has had a long and successful relationship with the New York Mets that will continue through the 2005 baseball season. We will continue to carefully monitor the situation and will have no additional comment at this time."

On Tuesday, shares in Time Warner fell a penny to $16.49, and Comcast's shares dropped 22 cents to $29.03. Shares in Cablevision -- whose rights to telecast Mets games expire at the end of the 2005 season -- fell 33 cents to $20.32.

Under the agreement announced Tuesday, Comcast and Time Warner's majority-owned Time Warner Cable -- a minority stake in which is held by Comcast -- will take equity stakes in Sterling Entertainment Enterprises, a venture formed by the Mets' owners to launch a regional sports network. Terms of the deal, such as the ownership stake that Comcast and Time Warner will have in SEE, were not disclosed.

The participants say they expect that all Mets home games and select away games will be broadcast in high definition.