Is it your inalienable right to have the NFL Network on your basic cable subscription? The NFL thinks so. Big Cable -- Time Warner Cable (Time Warner is the parent company of Time Warner Cable and Sports Illustrated) and Comcast, most notably -- think not.
We'll start to feel the heat on this issue Thursday night, when the first of eight games in 38 days is aired, a tepid matchup between Indianapolis and Atlanta (that lineup is the extent of live NFL football on the 24-hour NFL channel). The two referendum games come later, a month apart -- Green Bay at Dallas on Nov. 29, and New England at the Giants on Dec. 29.
The Green Bay-Dallas game will draw attention because this game for NFC supremacy and likely home-field advantage through the playoffs won't be seen on cable TV in either team's state capital; Madison and Austin don't have the NFL network on their cable systems.
The Patriots could be going for an undefeated regular season in week 17 at the Meadowlands, and 70 percent of the country with cable TV won't be able to watch because the big cable companies -- Time Warner and Comcast being the largest -- haven't reached a deal with the NFL to show the channel.
This is the second season with eight games on the fledgling network. The NFL eschewed a $400 million annual offer from Comcast to farm out the eight games before the 2006 season so the league could show them on its own network. Though the NFL has made deals with 240 smaller companies nationwide, most of the country is locked into Big Cable. And it's highly unlikely a deal will be made with either Time Warner or Comcast to break the logjam in time to show any or all of the eight games this year, though the Federal Communication Commission may force the two sides to binding arbitration after its monthly meeting in Washington on Nov. 27.
I want to lay out the two positions so you can have an opinion, if you want to have one. I've had a lot of people who won't see the games tell me, in essence: a pox on both their houses for not being able to figure out a fair way to give us the games.
I'll let Dallas owner Jerry Jones, the chairman of the league's broadcast committee, lay out his side, then you'll hear from the cable companies.
"We offer the cable company several minutes of advertising inventory on NFL Network. Every hour of every day they receive commercial time where they sell the ads and keep all the revenue. And in an effort to be better partners, we even set aside extra commercial inventory during our highly rated NFL games. Each cable operator gets 18 30-second ads during these games and they keep all the revenue from those too. Why do they have to charge the fans?
"Ask the fans this: Would you trade in three shopping channels, the Versus Network and Turner Classic Movies for the opportunity to have one channel in this country dedicated to football year-round? We offer a tremendous array of football-related content, the most popular programming in the country, and we do it for the cost to the cable operator of less than one movie ticket a year per subscriber. Would you rather go see one movie in the theater for two hours or have 24/7 year-round access to football?''
Big Cable clearly thinks the NFL Network is expensive niche programming, and disputes the league's claim it wouldn't have to raise rates if it took on the network. As one cable company official said to me: "The NFL wants us to show eight football games in six weeks, and then the rest of the year show a channel that has more repeats than ESPN News. They want us to do something that would force us to raise our rates. And quite frankly, there's been no groundswell from our customers to do this.''
I thought the fair thing might be to show how much money the cable companies are charged to carry some channels, just to put the stance of the NFL into some perspective. The firm SNL Financial, based in Charlottesville, Va., gathers financial data for the cable industry and provided me with these figures:
COST PER SUBSCRIBER HOUSEHOLD (per month)
Leading non-sports channels
TNT: 91 cents
Disney Channel: 83 cents
USA Network: 51 cents
CNN: 46 cents
TBS: 44 cents
Nickelodeon: 43 cents
FX: 36 cents
Leading sports channels
ESPN: $3.26
Fox Sports Net: $1.92
NFL Network: 80 cents
Fox College Sports: 63 cents
NHL Network: 51 cents
ESPN2: 46 cents
NBA TV: 36 cents
Keep in mind that this is an average. As Jones says, for mass distribution with the big companies, the NFL would likely make a deal with the cables for 60 or 65 cents per subscriber per month. One compromise offered by Time Warner but turned down by the NFL was to have the company make the eight games available on pay-per-view, with the NFL setting the pay-per-view price per game and collecting all revenue.
I expressed my disbelief to one cable analyst that cable companies viewed the value of the NFL Network almost double that of CNN, which has to be a staple of every cable system in the United States, with instantaneous coverage of wars and disasters worldwide. "You've got to understand one thing about sports and cable TV,'' the analyst said. "Sports rights fees are the one thing in the business that keep spiraling up and up, while the cost of a lot of these other channels, even the ones that seem so important, are remaining relatively flat.''
It still seems insane to me. Even the NHL Network -- and I don't even know what that is -- costs cable companies, on average, five cents more than CNN. NBA TV (36 cents per subscriber per month) is nine cents more than CNBC.
I have DirecTV, and, of course, the satellite carries the Network. But I don't watch the Network much, because I don't have time to watch much NFL programming other than games. Certainly I'll watch the games when they come on, beginning Thursday night. I heard Jim Nantz say on WFAN recently he doesn't have it in his Connecticut home, and my friend at ESPN.com, Len Pasquarelli, told me he doesn't watch it either.
I have nothing against it, and I'm sure I'm missing things by not watching the regular programming. But there's a sea of NFL programming on ESPN and Fox and everywhere else, and you could go blind watching it all. The NFL Network, it seems to me, would have a better case if it had more live events than eight games, the week at the NFL Scouting Combine and draft coverage.
You make the call. Who's to blame for you not having your games, cable America?
Then they say Oh we want it to be free for our "fans", WELL THEN GIVE IT to the cable companies for FREE!!
