Dodger Fans Face Second Season With No Games on TV Amid Fee Rift

As the Los Angeles Dodgers begin spring training, they’ll be invisible to most TV fans back home. For a second straight year, a dispute over the subscriber fees sought by Time Warner Cable, which operates the Dodgers’ SportsNet LA, is blacking out games to more than 60 percent of Los Angeles-area viewers. Under an accord valued at $7 billion to $8 billion, Time Warner Cable became the charter distributor of the Dodgers’ SportsNet LA and set about pressing other pay-TV providers in the region to charge all of their subscribers $4-plus a month for games. That’s more than the New York Yankees charge for the YES Network, according to researcher SNL Kagan. DirecTV, Charter, Dish, Verizon Communications, AT&T’s U-verse and Cox Communications all refused. As a result, only local subscribers of Time Warner Cable and tiny Bright House Networks can legally see Dodger games.