Dodgers, Time Warner Cable announce new channel: SportsNet LA

The name for the Dodgers' new television channel: SportsNet LA. The Dodgers and Time Warner Cable officially announced their television contract, with the team-owned channel starting in 2014. The deal, pending the approval of Major League Baseball, covers 25 years and is believed to be worth between $7 billion and $8 billion to the team.

The Dodgers are to remain on Fox Sports through the 2013 season, but the team decided it wanted its own channel thereafter and negotiated with Fox and Time Warner Cable. "We concluded last year that the best way to give our fans what they want -- more content and more Dodger baseball -- was to launch our own network," Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter said in a statement. The Dodgers -- not Time Warner Cable -- will program the new channel. In an interview, executives of the company said they believed the SportsNet LA name would be distinctive enough from the Time Warner Cable Sportsnet name given to the new Lakers channel. The Lakers and Time Warner Cable also launched a Spanish-language channel. The Dodgers deal does not include a separate Spanish-language channel from Time Warner Cable. The company charges other distributors close to $4 per month to carry the Lakers channel -- fees that are passed on to consumers in some way -- and the new Dodgers channel is expected to be sold at close to $5 per month.