Ugh I was planning on getting that for the first time this season. I have iO cable in NY.

Wow, that's horrible news. I live in an apartment building so I couldn't even get DirecTV if I wanted to.

There are a lot of people up in arms about this so here's some contact info if you'd like to voice your opinion to the Commish:
http://diamondsareforhumor....

However, from a pure financial standpoint, I'm unsure what to make of this. First off, here's a pretty informative article on the situation - cert. worth a look:
http://www.multichannel.com...

Something I did not know was that cable operators started offering Extra Innings package in 2001- before that, DirecTV had the exclusive rights so it will just be going back to the way it was.

Also of note from the article is that Extra Innings generated an estimated 280k subscribers across both cable and satellite services in 2005. That's very few compared to the NBA and nothing compared to the NFL. Add to that the fact that MLB.tv picked up 1.3 million subscribers in the same time frame and you can kind of see what MLB is thinking here. They are basically checking with DirectTV to see how much of a premium buyout they could get for an under-performing asset (esp. one that is being partially cannibalized by another of their own products). Anyway, I'm not saying it's right - I'm just trying to see the reasoning behind it.

Finally Bud finds an issue that brings me in harmony with Yankee fans! Good work and let's keep up the pressure on this. MLB needs to realize that marketing is all about training behavior. If they cut me off from watching my team I am going to learn there is more to do on a summer night than watch baseball. I can't see how that is good biz for them.

Baseball is making a huge mistake. By limiting themselves to only Direct tv, they are shunning hundreds of thousands of other fans and potential future fans just like Boxing has done. I used to be a big Boxing fan and now, since everything seems to be on pay-per-view, I no longer watch nor know who's who in that sport. It completely alienated me and now Baseball,in a slightly different way, will do the exact thing to many fans. Luckily, I just switched from Cable to Direct tv in December unknowingly to this MLB move. I feel sorry for all of those millions of die-hard fans that will be missing out on the great entertainment.

I'm a DirecTV subscriber and I am a Yankees fan. There are Yankees fans who have DirectTV and not cable, as well, we cannot forget here.

We get NFL Sunday Ticket and it's great (we actually got DirecTV because of it, originally). We probably won't be getting this, at this time (I might get it one day myself now that it's an option), but I don't see it as a big deal. More as a natural thing/progression/situation that has to be examined.