KTLA to Air Late-Season Dodgers Games to Honor Vin Scully

Los Angeles-based Dodgers fans deprived of watching their local team, whose games are only available on Time Warner Cable’s SportsNet LA, will finally be able to see some baseball from their couch. Local CW affiliate KTLA will air a number of late-season Dodgers games to help celebrate the final season of legendary broadcaster Vin Scully thanks an agreement with Charter Communications, which is merging with TWC.

Starting on Friday, Sept. 23 at 6:15 p.m. PT, Charter will simulcast the first of six Dodgers games featuring Scully on both SportsNet LA and KTLA. The Sept. 23 telecast will also feature a live pregame ceremony honoring Scully. The rest of the Dodgers-Rockies games in L.A. that weekend (a Saturday night and Sunday day game) will also be simulcast as will the final series of the regular season, when the Dodgers visit the Giants, from Sept. 30-Oct. 2.

“In Los Angeles, there’s no greater sports franchise than the Los Angeles Dodgers, and in the history of baseball, there’s been no greater voice than the incomparable Vin Scully,” said Don Corsini, KTLA5’s president and general manager, in a statement. “We thank Charter and the entire Los Angeles Dodgers organization for the unique opportunity to honor the dean of sports broadcasters, and share these iconic Dodgers games and moments with our entire KTLA5 Southern California community.”

Time Warner Cable made a similar deal at the end of the 2014 season, broadcasting the team’s final six games on KDOC, Channel 56, which also included series against the Rockies and Giants.

: Thank God,” Scully said at the charity event, which raised more than $1.5 million.”]

Starting in 2014, Dodgers games, many of which had been free over the air since the team arrived in L.A. before the 1958 season, have only aired on TWC’s SportsNet LA after team owners secured a multi-billion-dollar deal to create the new cable channel carrying Dodgers games and related programming. 

Other distributors, including DirecTV, balked at the carriage fee, reported to be between $4 and $5 per subscriber each month. As a result, an estimated 70 percent of homes in the Dodger market, who don’t subscribe to TWC, can’t receive the games.

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