Charter to Begin Carrying Dodgers' TV Channel Tuesday

Charter will carry SportsNet LA in Southern California on the most widely subscribed to tier of service

A yearlong stalemate that prevented hundreds of thousands of Dodgers fans from watching their favorite team on TV at home will end Tuesday when Charter Communications begins carrying the team's cable channel.

About two weeks after Charter announced a nearly $57-billion deal to buy Time Warner Cable, it will begin carrying SportsNet LA on Tuesday in Southern California on the tier of service with the widest subscription base. Chief Executive Tom Rutledge said when the deal was announced in May that the company was "committed" to bringing the Dodgers games to fans.

Los Angeles hosts Arizona Tuesday at 7:10 p.m. in the second of three games. Viewers in Los Angeles can find SportsNet LA on channel 44 SD/789 HD.

Time Warner Cable has been the only major distributor to carry the network since it began broadcasting at the start of the 2014 baseball season. Other pay-TV providers refused to carry the channel due to what they described as high fees.

The deal announced last month would give Charter, backed by cable pioneer John Malone's Liberty Media Corp., a sizable footprint in Southern California, with more than 2 million customers in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, San Diego, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, according to The Times. Charter also is planning to purchase Bright House Networks, a smaller cable provider, producing a new company with 23.9 million subscribers in 41 states.

The deal will need federal and state government approval but is considered more likely to pass muster with regulators than Comcast Corp.'s recent abortive effort to acquire Time Warner Cable. Comcast owns NBC Universal, which is the parent company of CNBC, NBC News and this site.

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