TORONTO and FENELON FALLS, Ont. – Independent cable company Cable Cable is the first non-Rogers carrier to sign up for Rogers Sportsnet One, the new 24/7 sports channel launched last week.
General manager Mike Fiorini told Cartt.ca it was a move he felt he had to make, saying there were a number of customers who expressed their frustration at not being able to find Toronto Blue Jays games on their dials. Sportsnet One had three Jays games over the past weekend and has 23 more on the schedule through the end of the baseball season.
The channel also has NHL, NBA, other MLB games and soccer on its live events roster. Sportsnet One will have over 800 hours of live games in its first year.
“We had a lot of frustrated analog (cable) people coming in,” he said. However, the games Sportsnet One carried last weekend were originally slated for digital channel TSN2, so analog cable customers wouldn’t have been able to see them anyway.
The company is going to run some local promotions to try and convert some more of those analog folks to digital – and educate the rest about where to find the new channel. Cable Cable will place it on digital basic
A Canadian Cable Systems Alliance member, Cable Cable normally relies on the buying group for programming deals but Fiorini felt he had to act right away because: “we didn’t want Bell or Shaw Direct to launch it first, because we would have lost a ton of customers, I think.”
Cable Cable serves about 4,000 customers in and around Fenelon Falls and Bobcaygeon, Ont.
– Greg O’Brien
