FCC Tweets Baseball Updates To Blacked Out Cablevision Customers

While some lawmakers are calling for the FCC to intervene in the Cablevision/Fox pissing match over carriage fees, the FCC made some attempt last night to keep blacked-out Phillies fans informed.

The agency used its Twitter account to update people on the score and pitching changes during Game 3 of the NLCS, which saw the evil San Francisco Giants shut out the heroic Phillies of Philadelphia.

We don’t know if these updates are in violation of that whole “not transmitting accounts of the game” boilerplate disclaimer you hear near the end of every game.

Meanwhile, the American Television Alliance, a coalition that includes Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, Dish Network and Charter among its members, is less than impressed with the FCC’s Twitter solution to the blackout:

Instead of using its authority to protect Cablevision’s customers from the News Corp blackout, the FCC tweeted updates from the Phillies-Giants playoff game last night to fill in ‘the baseball void for those without Fox-Cablevision.’ The only solutions the FCC has offered to this problem so far have been suggesting consumers turn back the clock and install rabbit ears, or that they switch TV providers despite offering no guarantee that blackouts won’t happen to another provider or in any other part of the country in the near future. And now this? Twitter updates of baseball games? The FCC needs to step up to the plate and create a real solution by reforming retransmission consent rules immediately.

No word yet on whether or not the FCC will once again take to its Twitter account when the Phillies and Giants go at it again tonight.

Of course, anyone with access to Twitter probably also has access to any number of sports and news sites with better updates…

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