The following story is from a Sports Fan Coalition member in New Jersey caught between Philly, New York, and the sports-media industrial complex:

Manalapan in the Middle

By cdonn

I am a HUGE Philadelphia sports phanatic, I’m a senior in high school, and live in Manalapan, New Jersey, which is a part of Monmouth County. I live about an hour and ten minutes from NYC and an hour and twenty minutes from Philadelphia. So I am smack in the middle between cities and teams. Thing is, I can’t ever seem to get all of my Eagles on my television, because as I am zones, every station is basically New York.

 My local cable company, Cablevision, is primarily based in northern Jersey and in parts of New York. Those who don’t know, Cablevision works in part with MSG which covers all local New York teams. So my primary sports channels are all New York coverage (CBS 2, NBC 4, FOX 5, ABC 7, SNY, MSG, ect.), and I am left with only three Philly stations (FOX 29, ABC 6, and NBC 10).

I am able to get 90% of Eagles games because FOX covers the Eagles most the year, so I can pick it up on FOX 29 when the Giants play on FOX 5 NY. CBS on the other hand gets 2-3 non-nationally televised Eagles games each year. This makes it impossible to watch these games from my home because I do not get CBS 3 at all. I either have two options, pull out a radio or drive a good half hour away to finally get a bar which broadcasts the game on TV.  This process becomes annoying after a while because as we all know sometimes we just want to sit back in the recliner and watch the game at home, but it is not possible. This usually wouldn’t bother me, but there is no such way for me to get these games from my home unless I switch over to DirecTV and NFL Sunday Ticket, which is not worth for the three games a year that I miss.

What also gets on my nerves is that I do not have the option to switch to Comcast which gets all these channels and games. In this case I feel something needs to be done in which I can catch all my Eagles games, without switching over to satellite.

SFC Responds:  This is a good example of how the sports and media industries write the rules, without the best interests of fans at heart.  Our SFC member in New Jersey is a victim of how the Nielsen rating company defines local television markets.  These boundaries make jerrymandered political districts look logical!  What you think of as “local” might be totally different from what the broadcast industry thinks of as local.  Also, it would be interesting to see if the people who can’t see their games had their taxpayer dollars used to build the stadium where those games are being played.  Hmmm…. And to think, all this guy wants to do is watch his team from the comfort of his own recliner.  Too much to ask???!!!!