No Orioles OTA in Washington D.C.?

[jrbdmb]

Several years ago I lived in northern Virginia, and in the D.C. market the Orioles were carried either on cable channel HTS (now Comcast Sportsnet) or OTA on channels 20 or 50.

Now that I am getting D.C. locals with Dish Network, I was expecting games not on CSN to be on TV-50, but they aren't. For example, I see games on 06/21, 06/22, and 06/24 that are televised OTA on WJZ (Baltimore channel 13) but not on *any* D.C. station, including TV-50. The Orioles official website shows TV-50 as the D.C. "flagship station", but doesn't show them carrying *any* games in their TV schedule. :(

Anybody that can add any insight on this? Nobody in D.C. is bothering to carry Orioles games OTA anymore?

Update: After a little bit more digging, turns out that this year OTA games are being shown on WPXW Channel 66, the D.C. PAX affiliate. Dish doesn't carry this channel, DirecTV does. :bang If this keeps up, I may have to switch to DirecTV - I'm getting more and more reasons to do so (Fox Sports West 2, College Sports TV, YES, and now OTA Orioles games). I am surprised, however, that the games are being carried on a minor station that may not be carried by many outlying cable companies ...

[Msguy]

Get Direc TV installed and order MLB Extra Innings. You'd see your O's. If you live in The O's home broadcast area you'd see every game that was broadcast on Comcast Sportsnet Channel 629 whether you had Extra Innings or not because that would be your local Regional Sports Network. Over The Air O's games well I don't know about them because I don't live in the O's Home broadcast Market and I don't know if Direc TV carries the over the air station that the O's are on when they aren't on Comcast Sports Net. Most of there games though I believe are on CSN. Have a nice day

[Brett]

I believe Pax 66 has majority cable penetration around the greater D.C. metro area, and it has DirecTV carriage. It is a rimshot station though with no local production , whose viewers are mostly cable viewers. There is no real local identity for the station (typical with PAX).

Baltimore DMA cable systems carry a PAX TV National Feed, but carry WJZ/WNUV that carry Orioles.

If NBC buys out Paxson, and moves Telemundo to CH.66 (a full power station) and PAX gets shut down, where would Orioles go?

Would WDCA 20 (now Fox owned) be interested? My guess is Comcast would try bidding to move all games to cable.

[Ken_F]

jrbdmb,

Earlier this season, I believe WB50 was showing some HDTV Orioles games from Comcast Sportsnet HD on their digital broadcast. I haven't checked WB50 Digital in awhile, so don't know if they are still doing this (presumably they had Comcast's permission).

[Msguy]

Tonights Orioles game played in Atlanta was on TBS