Posted on 12/19/2007 5:22:15 PM PST by Snickering Hound
WAHINGTON — Two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the NFL on Wednesday threatening to reconsider the league's antitrust exemption if it doesn't make games on the NFL Network available to more viewers.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., expressed concern that many fans in their home states will not be able to see games on the channel involving the New England Patriots or the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Leahy is the committee's chairman, and Specter is its ranking member.
"Now that the NFL is adopting strategies to limit distribution of game programming to their own networks," they wrote, "Congress may need to reexamine the need and desirability of their continued exemption from the Nation's antitrust laws."
Eight games air this season on the NFL Network, which is available in fewer than 40 percent of the nation's homes with televisions. The league has been feuding with several major cable companies over whether they should carry the channel as part of a basic package.
Games are simulcast on free TV locally for each team, but that doesn't include regional markets such as Vermont for the Patriots or parts of Pennsylvania for the Steelers. NFL officials have repeatedly said they will not agree to any distribution arrangement that only involves games and not year-round broadcast of the channel.
That is true. But I do not have much choice in the programming packages. If I want one stupid news channel, I pay for them all and I am counted as a subscriber because a portion of my payment is given to them in "subscriber" fees. If I go to the grocery store in this great free country of ours, I am allowed to push around a cart and only put in the groceries that I like and I intend to consume. I am charged by the item and I am not coerced into to paying for groceries that I do not intend to consume. If I want to watch say 10 of my favorite channels, I am forced to pay for a boatload of programming that I never watch or even program into my remote. These racketeers in cable media charge advertising fees not by ratings but how many homes that have extorted their way by these so called subscriber fees. There is really not Democrat or Republican position on this extortion as the clowns in both parties are scared to shake up big media. You see these clowns have a system by which they shake down special interests for campaign "contributions" of which most of that money is put back into stupid and insulting campaign advertising. The clowns in both parties absent of any message or ideas NEED big media to convert money into votes, because they are not leaders in any real sense of the word, and simply officeholders. That is their highest purpose to acquire office and hold it by any means. If that means placating big media who coerce consumers into paying for media that they do not want or consume so be it.
ESPN’s NFL live is a year round show. Wall-to-wall draft coverage is now the norm from about three full weeks even though the draft only takes two days. Even the combine gets serious reportage.
The NFL is a big deal all year, sure it’s bigger when they’re playing games, but it generates more off season press than all the other sports combined... and that’s without any Bengals getting arrested. And even if it wasn’t the NFLN is a year round network and there’s no reason they shouldn’t expect their deals to include being carried all year. And if the cable companies don’t like it they’re free not to sign. The very fact that this dispute has lasted over a year shows congress should keep out of it, if the NFL really was an all powerful monopoly the cable companies couldn’t possibly have held out this long.
I have Cox and get NFLN as part of the digital package. The $10/month fee covers the converter and the programming. All told, I pay $75/month for 2 basic and my digital packs. Not too bad from where I sit.
Problem is no Big Ten Network, for all the same reasons.
TV is a luxury when you look at reality. Either get cable, satellite, or one of the newer technologies coming out. Or even just get over the air programming for free.
Problem is it is easier for people to bitch about the cable company and lack of choices than it is for them to get off their but and change providers.
When they have a government protected monopoly they are subject to the whims of government.
Government doesn’t need to intervene? They already intervened when they gave them an exemption. All they are saying is maybe they don’t need the exemption anymore...
I understood the crux of the argument to be that the NFL does not want cable companies charging extra for their product.
The cable companies have created this issue by attempting to make additional profits off of the NFL Network.
I’m not sure there should be any anti-trust laws at all. But, if there are, they ought to apply equally across the board with no exemptions for wealthy sports leagues.
Except when the channel you love so much is no longer available because only you and a few others liked it and was formerly supported by those subscriber fees. Obviously thats free market, but that's how current lineups are working right now. Seriously, QVC or HSN won't be a very popular ala carte selection and would die, much to the chagrine to people like my mother in law.
The other crux of the argument is the NFL wants ESPN money and ESPN placement (i.e. $1.10/subscriber/month on basic cable) from the two big holdouts (Time Warner and Comcast), something they don’t get from any other provider (try getting NFLN with DirecTV’s or Dish’s basic 40-channel lineup; you can’t).
Where I live there is a competitive market and with basic cable I get all I care to view.
Good God, what are you paying per month that makes you so insane about this?
What you’re not realizing is that these “racketeers” get the channels in bundles. If you’re a cable company you don’t get to just buy ESPN and ESPN2 the networks all the sports fans want, ESPN pushes their other networks on you, Classic, News, Desportes. And don’t forget ESPN is owned by The Mouse (Disney), how do you think ABC family gets out there? There’s a lot of creative contracts but the punchline is there’s half a dozen super networks that control most of the cable dial, they sell their channels to the cable company in bundles that include rules on how they’re bundled to you. Unless the cable companies can buy a la carte there’s no way they’ll ever sell a la carte, and as long as The Mouse, Viacom, Universal, Discovery and the others own the the dozen or so channels that are why people buy cable the companies will never be able to buy a la carte.
Last I heard QVC and HSN actually pay the cable companies to carry them, so if a la carte ever happens (which it won’t but let’s pretend) those will probably be included free by the cable company. But other bottom tier networks like ABC Family probably would bite the dust in an a la carte world.
I think the NFL strategy will eventually be pay-per-view...buying direct from the NFL and not via CBS or ESPN or ABC....basically cutting out the middle-man. It will take ten years and they are comfortable in waiting this out. This episode now...is simply a stepping stone.
As for the idea of me paying $39 a month during the NFL season....to get various games on my TV...nope. You can forget about that kind of deal. The most I can see a reasonable guy paying...is $10 a month...which won’t work in terms of profitability.
The amusing thing...the NFL is the only one that might try this and get away with it. No one would dare attempt this with Major League Baseball or the NBA.
If it was a big enough deal to be a ratings magnet, the cables would be happy to carry it on the basic tier. The problem seems to be that the price charged seems to be higher than the revenue delivered minus reasonable profit.
Of course, the problem could be solved by a la carte cable pricing.
In Irving, Jones tried to get the city to torpedo the transit system to free up the 1% sales tax for his pocket. The voters said no, and he moved the team to a city with more suckers - the same folks that Bush had soaked to make his baseball team worth selling.
Define ratings magnate. There are a lot of problems in this. On the one hand the NFL is probably pushing too hard, on the other hand TW and Comcast are basically being bitter about the way ESPN kicked their asses in that last round of negotiations and are taking it out on another sports network. Oh and speaking of other sports networks let’s not forget that Comcast owns VS and has a vested interest in keeping competition as far away from their network as possible. Then of course the NFL has been deliberately scheduling games with teams in TW and Comcast run cities to get the people to apply extra pressure for them. The whole thing turned into a massive pissing contest and at this point both sides are pretty much wrong.
A la carte is never going to happen, as I explained to somebody else in 33.
Nope that’s not gonna happen. Right now the NFL is making slightly over 1 billion dollars a year from the TV contracts. There’s simply no way they’ll pull of that kind of cash in any kind of pay-per-view thing, even if half the audience didn’t walk away from the sport if they did that the numbers just don’t work.
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