Heads up to those in Iowa with DirecTV

First off, sorry for not posting TV listings for today last night, just ran out of hours in the day.

I found out this morning that those in Iowa with DirecTV are caught in the middle of the retrans dispute between Dish Network and Fox.

John Ourand, who is the sports media reporter for the Sports Business Journal, tweeted last night that for last Saturday's college football games, Fox Sports moved their broadcats to a different satellite so that Dish Network didn't have access to the games and then sold the broadcasts to the individual RSN's, MSG (which has it's own dispute going with Dish Network), and Comcast. The RSN's and MSG purchased the games and Comcast didn't, thus the Kansas/Baylor game wasn't available to DirecTV subscribers in Iowa who only have Comcast SportsNet Chicago for an RSN and who don't have the sportspack.

I can see two reasons why Comcast didn't purchase the games, one reason is money and the second reason and probably the biggest reason is that in addition to Chicago, Comcast has regional sports networks in Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Boston, those regions, along with Chicago aren't exactly college football hotbeds. Yeah, Iowans get hosed on the deal, but why would Comcast spend a butt load of money to purchase games that the majority of their viewers really don't care about?

Will this be the case every Saturday until Dish Network and Fox kiss and make up, who knows. But with the Iowa St./Oklahoma game being on FSN a week from Saturday, this could impact DirecTV subscribers in Iowa.

Just as an FYI for those with Dish Network, in case you are wondering why you have regional FSN's out of Pittsburgh and Denver, these two are not owned by Fox and are owned by DirecTV.