I hear ya. Steinbrenner was smart in the way he went about putting YES together. He owns the Yanks, and had a stake in the Nets at the time, too. He also locked up the Devils once their current TV deal is up, and also looked into getting some other programming like Manchester United soccer.
If Pohlad wants to make a Twins focused network a reality, then he would try to lock up the T-wolves and Wild as well as some college teams to make it happen. YES has proven successful, and so has NESN for the Red Sox. I think it's pretty much inevitable that baseball owners are gonna go this route.
There will definitely be growing pains for baseball teams to do this. YES wasn't carried on Cablevision in the NY area for a long time. That wound up affecting about 6 million households. Finally, the two parties came to an agreement since so many fans were incensed that they couldn't see the games.