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FCC Tweets National Championship Game During Fox, Cablevision Dispute

by Warren Riddle on October 21, 2010 at 06:30 AM

fcc baseball tweet
On Oct. 15th, Fox Television and Cablevision failed to renew a contractual agreement about the broadcasting rights to Fox affiliates WNYW, WWOR and WTXF. Once the deadline to renew passed, Cablevision subscribers lost access to those local Fox channels, so now the Federal Communications Commission apparently feels obligated to intervene.

Instead of mediating or doling out some form of punishment, the FCC decided to flex its government muscle by live-tweeting updates from Game 3 of the National League Championship Series. And, proving that the FCC isn't actually composed of soulless government automatons, the first tweet even included a cheery bit of game commentary: "Matt Cain pitching a beauty."

The FCC only issued a few tweets about the game, but the feed does feature several links to sites where the 3 million blacked-out consumers can receive help and support. (Buy an antennae, and -- if you don't have one -- a digital TV.) While it may seem surprising that the FCC demonstrated an actual sense of humor, the most shocking aspect of this situation is that over 350,000 people actually follow the FCC Twitter account.

Tags: baseball, Cablevision, fcc, federal communications commission, FederalCommunicationsCommission, fox, national league championship series, NationalLeagueChampionshipSeries, socialnetworking, sports, twitter, web

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