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Fans Deserve NFL Network
By Steven M. Bornstein President and CEO of NFL Network
Maine Morning Sentinel, 01/03/2008
Football fans around the country watched a historic game on the last Saturday of the 2007 NFL season as the New England Patriots became the first team in 35 years to go undefeated in the regular season.
If some of the cable companies had their way, however, millions of fans would have missed this game. A few large cable companies tried to punish football fans by refusing to air the NFL Network and the game on reasonable terms.
Unlike these cable companies, we in the NFL had the best interests of our fans in mind, so we opened up the game to viewers around the country, who were then able to watch on either CBS or NBC if their cable company did not carry NFL Network.
NFL Network had the exclusive right to telecast the game. More than 240 cable companies like Cox, along with satellite providers like DirecTV and Dish, and telephone company video providers like AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FiOS, had already reached agreements with NFL Network to carry our programming in its entirety.
However, a few other large cable companies -- Time Warner, Cablevision and Charter -- refused to carry the network despite years of negotiations. Comcast carries NFL Network, but subscribers have to pay premium rates to get it. As a result, millions of die-hard NFL fans were at risk of missing out on this historic game.
The NFL is a business, but first and foremost, we are football fans. We recognized the fan interest in this game, and we took steps to ensure that fans around the country could see it.
We will all be facing this problem again next year unless the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) steps in and resolves this and similar disputes between large cable companies and independent programmers. NFL Network, like only a handful of other programmers, is an independent channel, not owned or controlled by a cable company. As a result, we face an uphill battle when negotiating with the large cable companies.
They have an incentive to discriminate against us in favor of their own sports channels. If you are a Comcast customer, you receive sports channels like the Golf Channel and Versus in your basic programming package, but you have to pay much extra to get NFL Network. Why? Because Comcast owns both the Golf Channel and Versus. Time Warner and Cablevision practice the same type of discrimination.
We recognize that football fans do not care about who is right or wrong in this dispute. They simply want to see popular NFL Network programming, including games like the Giants against the Patriots. But these cable companies refuse to budge. They believe they can make more money by exploiting fans in their negotiations.
This all started when Comcast made a deal with NFL Network to carry the channel broadly, then placed it on a pay-extra sports tier when they realized how much fans would be willing to pay for it. The other cable giants are now following suit.
The ratings from Saturday night's game tell the real story. The Patriots-Giants game was the most-watched program of the current TV season and the most watched program of any kind since the Academy Awards last February.
NFL programming is consistently rated as the most popular programming on television with the four most-watched shows of the season all NFL games. NFL Network is the only channel devoted 24/7 to America's favorite sport. It should not be relegated to a poorly promoted, pay-extra sports tier that takes advantage of our fans' passion for the NFL.
We have repeatedly called on the large cable companies to sit down with us and a neutral, third-party arbitrator to find a resolution to this dispute. Those cable companies have refused. As a result, FCC intervention is needed to ensure that the cable giants cannot discriminate against independent programmers like NFL Network and hold viewers hostage in the process.
A government-sanctioned, independent arbitration process would ensure that this kind of situation doesn't happen in the future. Fans deserve better than to be used as pawns in Big Cable's negotiating strategy. You can learn more about this issue by visiting www.iwantnflnetwork.com.