Washington -- MASN has picked up 30,000 more potential
viewers through an affiliation agreement with Fibrant, a new cable and
broadband operator offering service to Salisbury, N.C.
Starting next month, Fibrant will carry MASN and MASN 2 --
the regional sports networks co-owned by Major League Baseball's Washington
Nationals and Baltimore Orioles -- as well as HD versions of each channel, on
expanded basic. MASN 2 is an "overflow" channel that allows the programmer
to cover Nationals and Orioles games simultaneously. It carries ESPN
programming the rest of the time.
Fibrant's systems are the ninth in North Carolina to launch MASN,
which also carries college football and basketball games of interest to the
state, including those involving a dozen schools in the Carolinas (including
Wake Forest, East Carolina and North Carolina State).
Also carrying the network in North Carolina are Mediacom
Communications, Charter Communications, MI Connections, Reds Cable, SkyBest and
Tri-County Cable, as well as DirecTV and Dish Network.
MASN now reaches about 6 million homes via 25 systems in
seven states.
"North Carolina is a great sports marketplace with a
lot of passionate fans, and MASN is excited to return nightly major league
baseball to central North Carolina," said MASN spokesman Todd Webster. MASN
and Time Warner Cable have been in a years-long dispute over carriage of thenetwork in North Carolina.
