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Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue
I guess it's more like wielding a twig than an actual stick. That said, I think they have expanded their carriage thanks to carrying NHL games. I know I never knew such a channel existed before they got the NHL deal and I imagine the same goes for quite a few folks.
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What they were trying to do was get moved off "Sports Tier" type packages and into basic cable / sat packages. I can't remember if DirecTV changed their carriage with the NHL package, although I thought I remembered watching timber sports and some of the other outdoor sports stuff on it (shotgun shooting, dog birding, dog jumping-off-the-pier-into-watering, etc) and I've never had a sports pak.
But I know they had lots of fights early on with cable providers ("we will black out NHL games if you don't carry us on at least x% of your subscriber base" type arguments), and I don't remember any of the cable companies blinking. I could be wrong, I just don't remember any cable company caring enough.
The key was they wanted to use the NHL to get into enough households to go after the NFL, which I don't think worked out. But they may well have increased their viewership. There's more on this on other threads if you do some searching.