David P. Willis

Asbury Park Press

For Comcast customers, the YES Network remains on the bench.

It's not next up at bat either. Both sides say nothing has changed since Comcast dropped the Yes Network, the channel that carries most Yankees games and programming, in November.

So much for spring training.

Comcast says Fox, the majority owner of YES, charges too much for a channel that few people watch. YES Network says it is the "most watched regional sports network in the country."

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"Unfortunately, Comcast subscribers will not be able to watch the Yankees on YES this season because Comcast dropped YES in November," a YES Network spokesman said in a statement. "There are no indications that Comcast will return YES to its lineup."

YES Is the major broadcaster for the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Nets. It also features shows such as Yankees Magazine, Yankees Hot Stove and The Joe Girardi Show.

Yankees fan Louis Caprio of Toms River will miss the YES Network.

"I am just hoping somehow that they would sit down and negotiate and come to an agreement," Caprio said. "It's hard to do if they're not talking."

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Sports network fees

The issue places the fees that regional sports networks charge cable providers, which are passed on to customers in their cable bills, in the strike zone.

"You can't just pass them under the radar anymore," said Adam Gajo, a sports network analyst with SNL Kagan, a research firm. "Especially with sports rights fees getting a lot of press, consumers are aware of how much they are paying and they don't want to pay for something that they're not interested in watching."

Viewers have other options besides cable companies to get the programming they want, he said.

Cable providers blame regional sports networks or sports teams for those costs. "At the same time, there are a lot of customers saying, 'Well, I'm losing my access to the (regional sports network) but my cable bill still went up," Gajo said.

In 2015, YES Network's average fee was about $6 per customer, according to SNL Kagan. The broadcaster is seeking to raise its fee by about 30 percent, Gajo wrote in his report.

Quoting SNL Kagan, Comcast said YES Network is the most expensive regional sports network in the country.

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Many didn't watch

In the 2015 season, YES carried about 130 baseball games, but more than 90 percent of Comcast's 900,000 customers who received the YES Network didn't watch the equivalent of a quarter of those games during the season, Comcast said. The team, playing for the first time in almost two decades without fan favorite Derek Jeter, finished 87-75, second place in its division, and lost a wildcard playoff game to the Houston Astros.

"The issue is the price/value proposition for the YES network given the customer viewership data we have, which does not justify the price that Fox is asking for the network,” Comcast said in its statement to Press on Your Side.

After the channel was dropped, YES Network disputed Comcast claim's over the price.

"Comcast already agreed to pay the market rate," the network said. "This is about a company that wants to eliminate all competition by receiving all the benefits of a contract without respecting any of the obligations."

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So where does this leave customers? Some Yankees games are carried on WPIX Channel 11 and a few on ESPN. YES Network is telling fans to switch to other providers such as Verizon FiOS or DirecTV,

David P. Willis: 732-643-4039; dwillis@gannettnj.com; facebook.com/dpwillis732