Late yesterday, the NFL announced the game between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants this coming Saturday will be simulcast by both CBS and NBC. Originally, the game was only scheduled to be seen on the NFL Network, the league's television channel.
Given the historical implications of the game - the Patriots are going for the first unbeaten regular season since 1972 - a lot of people were in an uproar that they wouldn't be able to see the game. The NFL Network is only available to about 43 million of the American public, mainly on DirecTV and Dish Network, as well as a number of smaller cable companies across the nation.
Many of the big cable companies, such as Time Warner, Mediacom and Cox, do not carry the NFL Network because of high per subscriber fees the NFL demands. Plus the NFL doesn't want to allow cable companies to add the network to sports-tier programming, rather keeping it on a basic tier. However, earlier this year, Comcast won a court ruling that allowed them to add the NFL Network to some of their system's sports-tier programming.
This Saturday's game will be the first simulcast of an NFL game since the very first Super Bowl in 1967 when both CBS and NBC broadcast the game. However, for those broadcasts both networks used their own announcers and production staff. For the Patriots-Giants game, the NFL Network's Bryant Gumbel and Cris Collinsworth will call the game for all three networks.
(As an aside, Gumbel has been getting brutal reviews for his broadcasting of NFL Network games. This should give much of the country who hasn't seen an NFL Network game a chance to make up their own mind as to how well Gumbel does behind the mike.)
Reportedly, NBC and CBS had been in contact with the NFL since earlier in the fall when it appeared the Patriots could end up going into the game undefeated. Both networks were looking at the potential of record ratings for the game, considering New England has been involved in three of the highest-viewed NFL games this season.
According to NBC Sports head Dick Ebersol, as late as last week he didn't believe the NFL would allow the simulcasting of the game on any over-the-air network. However, the NFL contacted NBC and CBS earlier this week about both networks simulcasting the game. Both networks jumped at the chance.
What could have caused the normally hard line NFL to do an about face and allow this weekend's simulcast? An NFL spokesman said it wasn't because of mounting pressure from Congressional leaders -especially delegations from New England - that made them do a quick about-face in allowing the simulcast of the game.
Well, my "bullshit detector" went into hyper-drive when I read that this morning.
Rhode Island and Connecticut congressional delegations protested to the NFL that because of their proximity to both New York and Boston, many fans have loyalties to one team or the other and were being left out in the cold when it came to watching the game. They were upset with the league's definition of "home markets", which narrowed the area as to who would be able to get NFL Network games of local interest broadcast on a local over-the-air station.
For the Patriots-Giants game this Saturday, the NFL had designated greater New York and Boston as the home markets. That would have added nearly 11 million homes to the total that normally get the NFL Network. But it would have left out viewers in parts of New England and New York who consider themselves fans of the teams.
Also, the NFL was warned by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont - the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee - and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who is the ranking member of the committee, that it was “exercising its substantial market power to the detriment of consumers.” Both Leahy and Specter cautioned that the NFL's strategy might lead to a re-examination by Congress of the league’s exemption from anti-trust laws regarding the joint negotiation of its broadcast television rights.
Earlier this month, the NFL announced they were going to make the NFL Network available for free for a week after Christmas to any cable company who would agree to going to a third-party arbitrator to settle the dispute between the league and the major cable providers. Not one of the cable companies agreed to do so. The NFL is still pushing for Congressional hearings over the ongoing disputes between cable operators and television networks.
Through all of this, I'm sure Big Ten Conference head Jim Delany is watching these developments with the NFL Network. Given that the Big Ten Network is wanting even higher fees per subscriber than what the NFL Network is pushing for, there has been little to no movement from any of the major cable providers in the Midwest to pick up the network channel any time soon. And with the start of the Big Ten basketball conference season coming next week, a lot of fans in the Midwest will not be able to see their favorite teams play when most of them were able to in the past.
The NFL Network may be a very narrow niche network in the eyes of many people, especially those within the cable community. But the Big Ten Network is even more narrow of a focus and definitely doesn't have the marketing clout or the national appeal the NFL possesses. I think it's going to be a long winter for the Big Ten Network. And it will be interesting to see just when they blink.
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