Spectrum will offer prep sports to other carriers

For a price — $400 a school year — viewers who do not subscribe to Spectrum Networks, formerly Oceanic Time Warner locally, can still watch more than 200 local high school sports events.

The service, Spectrum High School Sports Hawaii, will be available in Hawaii and on the mainland beginning next month, Connecticut-based Spectrum announced Thursday.

There is no provision for sales of individual events. One subscription will offer two viewings simultaneously, a spokeswoman said.

High school sports, which have been the exclusive province of Oceanic for nearly 30 years, became an issue in the $79 billion acquisition of Oceanic Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks last year by Charter Communications.

In seeking to halt the sale, Oceanic’s competitor, Hawaiian Telcom, alleged in a 2015 filing with the FCC that Time Warner “engages in anti-competitive practices.” In addition some consumer watchdog groups argue that since high schools operate on tax funds there should not be any exclusivity to their games.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who has been the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation and the Internet, also has been a proponent of making the games more widely available.

Last year a Charter spokesman said the company was “exploring new opportunities to make high school sports more widely available across the state.”

Unlike University of Hawaii sports, where Spectrum also holds the rights but makes programming available to Hawaiian Telcom for a fee, it has retained exclusivity with the high school broadcasts.

The high schools had been concerned that if Spectrum lost its exclusivity, their rights fees — said to be in the neighborhood of $100,000 — might drop significantly.

A spokeswoman for Spectrum declined to say if the high schools will receive a higher rights fee under their existing contracts.

Sign-ups for Spectrum High School Sports Hawaii start July 22 with the first football broadcast on Aug. 4 matching Kamehameha and Farrington, according to the website https://spectrumhi.oc16.tv