Small pay-TV provider feels squeeze play over Dodgers channel

[Commentary] Champion Broadband, which serves about 5,500 subscribers in Arcadia and Monrovia, is the only pay-TV company in Southern California other than Time Warner that now carries the new Dodgers channel. And the company isn't happy about that dubious distinction.

"We've always been pushed around by the bigger guys," Dave Haverkate, Champion's chief executive, told me. "But never like this." At first, Haverkate said, he resisted Time Warner's take-it-or-leave-it offering of SportsNet LA. "The amount they wanted to charge was absurd," he said. "Then spring training came around, and we started getting calls from customers. They asked if we were carrying the Dodgers." Haverkate soon realized that roughly half his 4,000 pay-TV subscribers were ready to jump to Time Warner if that was the only way they could see Dodgers games. "If we lost half our customers, we'd be done," he said. So Haverkate caved to Time Warner's terms and agreed to carry SportsNet LA and to pass along the monthly fee to all its subscribers. He's gambling that he'll lose fewer customers because of the forced rate hike than he would from an exodus of Dodgers fans.