Or maybe the more relevant question is: Did Fox Sports Carolinas and Time Warner Cable bet on the wrong horse?

Nielsen put out a report late last week showing that, in the first month of the NBA season, several teams were getting better ratings in their local television markets. The New Orleans Hornets, Cleveland Cavaliers and Atlanta Hawks all showed significant gains.

Nowhere to be found: the Charlotte Bobcats.

In response to our request, Nielsen provided the entire list, and the Bobcats were last in the league in local TV ratings with a 0.425 average household rating — the percentage of TV households in that market tuned to Bobcats games. That's actually a drop of 65 percent from last year's Bobcats number for the same time period, despite all the team's Carolina ties — GM Michael Jordan, head coach Larry Brown, point guard Raymond Felton, forward Sean May, etc.

To put it another way, the Bobcats are doing no better in Charlotte than hockey's Carolina Hurricanes, even though the Canes are based in Raleigh. (It's tougher to say exactly how well, or poorly, the Bobcats are doing in the Triangle, because Fox Sports Carolinas doesn't track viewers specifically in this area.)

It's not as if the Bobcats are putting a great product on the court. They're 4-9.

In April, the Bobcats completed a deal with Time Warner Cable for the naming rights to Charlotte Bobcats Arena and for moving Bobcats game telecasts from Time Warner's News 14 to Fox Sports South, which presumably offered the team much more TV exposure. Evidently, the benefits aren't showing up yet.

The teams with the best local ratings so far, according to The Nielsen Company:

1. San Antonio 6.6
2. Cleveland 6.2
3. Portland 5.0
4. Utah 4.8
5. L.A. Lakers 4.2
6. Detroit 4.1
7. Phoenix 4.0
8. Boston 3.4
9. Houston 3.2
10. Chicago 2.9

After agreeing to televise more Carolina Hurricanes games, landing a deal to carry the Charlotte Bobcats and adding South Carolina to its lineup, Fox Sports South decided it had enough programming to launch a Carolinas network.

Hence the new Fox Sports Carolinas, to be abbreviated as FSCR in television program listings. You'll be able to get it on the same channel you're using to watch FSN South, for example channel 50 if you subscribe in Raleigh to Time Warner Cable. FSN South will send a more Carolinas-specific feed to Time Warner for viewers in those two states, says Jeff Genthner, senior vice president and general manager of Fox Sports South and FS Carolinas.

"It was time to really localize our brand," Genthner says.

FS Carolinas will televise 65 Canes games this year (up from 55), 70 Bobcats games and 43 ACC men's basketball games, including 19 on Sunday nights. The new regional sports network will look for additional opportunities to line up programming of local interest.

FS Carolinas also will carry women’s basketball, baseball, Olympic sports and coaches’ shows. The network says viewers will continue to see regional programming, including Atlanta Braves baseball and Southeastern Conference men’s and women’s basketball, Olympic sports and coaches’ shows.

Does this bolster Time Warner Cable's case that it can reach an agreement with a regional sports network at a time when TWC is still locked in a dispute on that subject with Mid-Atlantic Sports Network?

"I don't know whether we'll have any impact on that whatsoever," Genthner says, who nonetheless notes that MASN carries Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals baseball (the teams co-own MASN), which is "not what I would call local programming."

That's exactly what Time Warner has been arguing.