No Yankess? No problem. Comcast says TV losses 'minimal' so far with Yankees blackout

A top Comcast Corp. executive said Friday that the Yankees blackout among 900,000 Xfinity subscribers in the New York TV market has had a "minimal impact" on its business and "in fact we have been suprised at how low the defections have been."

Of course that could change on opening day on Monday with the Yankees home opener against the Astros. The Yankees will play 23 games in April and 20 of them will air exclusively on the Yes Network.

The Yes Network is spending millions of dollars in advertising in the New York TV market to sling mud and tell consumers they should drop Comcast for a pay-TV competitor to retain access to the Yankees.

Marcien Jenckes, executive vice president of consumer services in Comcast's cable division, said on Friday that the cable giant is prepared for increased volumes of calls from consumers over the Yankees blackout but so far "we really haven't seen them."

Yes Network's demands for higher fees for the network "was totally unreasonable given the value given to our subscribers," Jenckes said.

The Yes Network, he said, was using passionate Yankees fans to extract high fees from the cable giant. He added that Comcast would like to distribute the Yankees to its 900,000 subscribers.

In a public war of words over TV ratings, Jenckes said that over the last five years the Nielsen ratings for Yankees games have declined 40 percent and that on average about two percent of Comcast subscribers watch Yankees games when they air.

Comcast has said the Yes Network is the nation's most expensive regional sports network.

Tracy Dolgin, the CEO of the Yes Network, said that Comcast has overstated the cost of the network and Yankees ratings have been remarkably stable over the years. He said that Comcast has been misleading consumers. Yes ranked as the No. 1 cable network in the New York metro area during the last season, it says.