Cable Finally Has Deal with Extra Innings

According to numerous media outlets, Major League Baseball and DirecTV have reached a deal with inDemand to allow the big 3 cable companies (Comcast, Time Warner, Cox) to carry the MLB Extra Innings package for the next 7 years. As part of the deal cable will carry the new MLB Channel on it's basic tier when it's launched in 2009. inDemand and DireTV will also each have a 16% stake in the new network. As of now there is still no agreement between DishNetwork. Other cable companies can get in on this deal as well provided they agree to carry the MLB channel in 2009.

As an EI junkie who's only option was cable, I'm ecstatic at this. it's great to see cooler heads prevail and an agreement that benefits the fans for once. Yeah, there were only 200,000 of us, but we're your die-hards. We buy the tickets, the merchandise, play in the fantasy leagues, etc. People didnt want to have their choice of TV/internet/phone provider dictated by MLB. And as cool as MLB.tv seems to be, there's nothing like watching the games on your big HD wide-screen TV. I'm signing up as we speak.
Special thanks to Maury Brown over on The Biz of Baseball for his great coverage of these negotiations when most of the major media outlets seemed to be ignoring it.