Canzano: Trail Blazers must put fans first

Franchise will broadcast locally and stream direct-to-consumer.

Trail Blazers fans have been traumatized by the team’s TV distribution. (Photo: Naji Saker)

Portland’s beleaguered NBA franchise posted its biggest victory in a couple of years this week. The Trail Blazers made the whispers official on Wednesday — they parted ways with ROOT Sports.

The Blazers are following the blueprint laid out by the Seattle Kraken, Phoenix Suns, and Utah Jazz. Those franchises ditched their regional sports networks for over-the-air channels and launched a direct-to-consumer streaming option. The New Orleans Pelicans are doing the same thing.

Where can you watch the Blazers next season?

“Still in active negotiations,” a well-placed source told me. Local TV partners are involved. The days of Portland’s team being ‘blacked out’ in your living room are done, I’m told. If the Blazers are still your team and you’d like to see them play next season, you’ll be able to do so.

Remember when you could turn on your television and watch the team play throughout the season? Your kids fell in love with the young players. Your family ended up at the arena for a game. That wasn’t accidental. Exposure to the live-sports product is like glue. The hope here is that the Trail Blazers are serious about reconnecting with their primary consumers who reside in the team’s natural geographic footprint. Basically, it’s time to put die-hard fans first.

The franchise sold out its fan base in a deal with Comcast SportsNet Northwest in the summer of 2007, signing a 10-year, $120 million contract. Comcast got the rights to 55 regular-season games. KGW had the rest. That eventually morphed into a deal with NBC Sports Northwest, which took all the games in 2016. Then, came the shift to ROOT Sports in 2021. It was announced at the time by team President Chris McGowan as “the best decision for our fans.”

Since what?

Bowie over Jordan?

I don’t blame McGowan. He was the messenger. This is on Bert Kolde, the team’s vice chairman, and resident Oz. Over the years, Kolde engineered a series of business deals from behind the curtain in Seattle. He likes to squeeze nickels for kicks, never thinking much about the impact on fans.

I’ve written frequently over the years about how awful the team’s TV deals were for consumers. I railed hard against Comcast and that first contract. Distribution was an issue even before the first games were aired, particularly with DirecTV customers.

DirecTV was mired in a staring contest with DISH and Comcast over the distribution of NFL games. Blazers fans were caught in the fray. There were also large pockets in Oregon that couldn’t switch to Comcast if they wanted to. It caused frustration and angst. It came up daily on my radio show.

In 2010, lawmakers called a hearing at the state capitol over the matter. I was invited to give testimony. I put on a suit, drove to Salem, and told a committee that I thought Comcast was operating in bad faith and consumers were being harmed. I’d seen numbers from the ‘negotiations’ between the parties.

Comcast claimed DirecTV was being unreasonable. But behind closed doors, Comcast was asking for a carriage fee that it knew DirecTV and a line of local cable providers could never afford. The numbers didn’t work. The sides weren’t close. It was a leverage play. One that was negatively impacting the public. And I wondered if the legislature had the ability to do something about it.

Rep. Matt Wingard interjected at one point, wondering why I wasn’t more upset at the Trail Blazers. Why was my criticism pointed at Comcast? Didn’t the Blazers deserve my ire?

“It sounds like a bad decision to have many of your avid fans not be able to see the games in their homes. But this is the contract they’ve signed,” Wingard said. “Is there some reason to believe they were duped?”

The Blazers knew what they were doing. I was disappointed with all of the involved parties. The hearing was about Comcast so I went in on the carrier. But Wingard was right. The Blazers signed a contract that put their fan base in an awful position. Then, came the transition to NBC Sports Northwest, which subsequently squeezed out over-the-air TV viewers when it re-upped with the Blazers in 2016.

As one long-time team executive told me: “I’ve always thought dropping those 18 games off KGW was a mistake because of what they meant for more than 20 years to those non-cable subscribers.”

The NBC Sports Northwest coverage was embarrassing, too. Reporters practically carried pom poms on air. General Manager Neil Olshey kept notes and reprimanded and/or eliminated those who didn’t support what I nicknamed “Blazerganda” messaging. The distribution improved over time, but die-hard fans deserved so much better.

ROOT Sports came along in 2021 as a new-and-improved offering. I rolled my eyes. The press release declared: “With fans’ accessibility top of mind, this transition will help spread the Trail Blazers roots even farther throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond.”

Anchorage? Boise? Seattle? Did those cities even watch the Blazers? Or was the strategy really about gobbling up territorial rights and cutting costs?

What immediately ensued was larger distribution issues and increased fan frustration. The Seattle-based company didn’t know or understand Portland’s NBA franchise, either. The local TV broadcasters that fans fell in love with over the years — the trusted and steady Mike Barrett and his nutty sidekick, Mike Rice — were long gone by then. Finding the team on TV was a task, even for streamers who were dismayed to learn the NBA League Pass blacked out Portland games in the home market.

I’ve wondered over the last two decades if Blazers fans are mired in some kind of cruel experiment. Any time now, a team of sociologists and psychologists wearing white coats and holding clipboards will emerge from behind a two-way mirror and tell us the whole exercise was all a test of fan engagement.

That lawmaker was right. Comcast didn’t do this to NBA fans. NBC Sports Northwest didn’t do this. ROOT Sports didn’t do it, either. The Trail Blazers did all of this to their own fans. They systematically disenfranchised and alienated paying customers. Think about the absurdity of that.

I’m relieved to see the team has shifted to a more holistic mindset. It desperately needs to reconnect with fans. I’m eager to see who ends up with the rights locally (The CW? KPTV?). But I’m wondering why it took the franchise so long to take a step toward repairing the fractured connection with fans. The Blazers didn’t find their way back to your living room out of good conscience. The reset is caused by diminishing financial returns and uncertainty in the media marketplace.

ROOT Sports is wobbling. What happened? The short answer, provided by my media-world sources, is that cord-cutting combined with Comcast’s decision to move ROOT Sports to a less widely distributed tier on the package resulted in a hard hit to the bottom line. The reduced distribution triggered lower advertising revenue for the RSN. The Blazers’ dismal performance over the last few seasons didn’t help either.

Ratings were down. Interest waned. Fans checked out. It becomes difficult for ROOT Sports to justify rights fees when they’re stuck in a death spiral.

Said one TV industry source: “You end up with a failing business model.”

Still, I’m calling this the biggest win in a while for Portland’s NBA franchise. Fans have been through some ugly stuff. The product on the court needs to improve. But at the very least, fans who want to watch the team will be able to see it.

Progress comes at a price, I guess.

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