But, given its potential meaning for Padres fans, it's worth repeating.

“Our goal,” Padres President and COO Tom Garfinkel said, “is to make our broadcasts available to as many fans as possible in the future.”

That's good news to Padres fans who don't have cable TV for one reason or another and have been blacked out, so to speak, for several years. Cox Cable, which owns Channel 4 San Diego, and Time Warner Cable, which contracts with Cox to carry the channel, have been the only outlets by which local fans could see the Padres on television.

If you had satellite, or in the past couple of years, AT&T U-Verse, you were out of luck.

That sounded good to the Padres when they signed the contract with Cox, but Garfinkel clearly isn't a fan of a deal he inherited. Garfinkel's too smart to come out and insult a business partner, but it's pretty obvious what he meant when he talked about making the broadcasts more available.

When asked if that could take place with a new deal, he said, “I'm optimistic that could happen.”

It's going to make for very interesting discussions before Cox's deal expires after the 2011 season. Garfinkel said the club already “started having discussions with Cox exclusively about the future.”

Craig Nichols, vice president and general manager of Channel 4, could not be reached for comment. Cox no doubt wants the exclusivity to continue; the Padres don't. But does the club have an alternative?

“We've only had discussions with them up to this point,” Garfinkel said. “It doesn't mean that we won't explore other options in the future when and if that timing is appropriate. Right now it's not.”

Finding an option could be tricky. Without an NBA or NHL team in San Diego, it seems as though it would be difficult for another entity, whether it's Fox Sports Net or the club itself, to make a new network viable year-round. It's tough enough for Cox these days; coming off a near record-low average rating for the 2008 season, Channel 4 has seen ratings drop 14 percent from the same week last year (4.9 to 4.2).

So if there's no viable alternative, do the Padres continue to grant Cox exclusive rights, or do they force Cox to open the signal to anyone?

The former would bring the team more money; the latter would be better for more fans.

See? Interesting.