Comparing Time Warner vs Direct TV

Today customers of satellite and cable TV have literally hundreds of games they can pick from every month. While 20 years ago you might find two college football games on Saturday and two pro games on Sunday, today you can literally pick from two dozen or more games every weekend. Even the NCAA Men’s tournament has additional coverage with the Mega March Madness on Direct TV.

Content is king today, and as the saying goes the sports networks want to bring as much sports content as possible to the sports fan so they can sell more ads. Lots of new all-sports networks have popped up over the last few years. Some of these include Altitude Sports, which carries NBA Nuggets and the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche matches, and also the Big 10 network and the mtn, the network of the Mountain West conference.

Sure these channels are good for people in certain regions of the country, but disputes between the providers of sports programming and cable networks that deliver the content have resulted in difficulties to the customer. Consider what happened last year, the Big Ten Network began broadcasting in 2007, but they were in a carraige dispute with cable TV provider Time Warner. Subscribers of Time Warner in Indiana were unable to see some of the local teams play because of the carraige dispute. Finally however, the companies involved came to terms before the fall football season, so customers could stay with Time Warner rather than having to switch to one of the satellite TV providers such as DISH Network or Direct TV. An important thing to do when considering providers is to consider all factors, comparing DIRECTV against Time Warner.

Out of market sports packages are another consideration for the customer. Many cable customers have switched to DirecTV because the NFL Sunday ticket is exlusively on satellite TV. This has upset some Comcast and DISH Network customers, who do not understand why a package Sunday Ticket isn’t available to every provider. Alternative packages though are more friendly to subscribers, like the National Hockey League Center Ice and the NBA League Pass, which are available on almost every cable TV and satellite company. Direct TV seems to have all of the sports programming like the Sunday Ticket.