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**tussinelde** · 10-30-2008, 05:27 PM

Personally i'm going to redirect my FU to the cable companies. My carrier provides NFL network so i'm not in turmoil, but its the cable companies that are keeping NFL network off the lower tier of standard channels. And this is one of the reasons the NFL keep re-upping thier sunday ticket with direct tv instead of the cable companies(separate issue i know). This is a part of an article on espn.com:

Around the time of the 2004 Sunday Ticket renewal, the NFL Network had just gone on the air, and its finances came into play. The NFL wants to charge $7 to $9 per household per year for the NFL Network on basic, a fee the carriers strongly resist. This price would make the NFL Network, a seasonal product for a specialized audience, one of the most expensive items in the national cable universe. ESPN, which is to cable what cheeseburgers are to McDonald's, charges $30 to $35 per year for multiple channels with very broad appeal. CNN charges about $5 a year to the cable carriers, NBA TV about $4, and most cable channels charge far less or nothing at all. (The ones that charge nothing subsist on advertising.) Cable carriers want the NFL Network exiled to a premium sports tier so they will meet less resistance passing the price along to consumers, but that means a far smaller audience for NFLN, and hence lower ad revenues. While the money fight was going on, Comcast founded Versus, which is vaguely a competitor to ESPN, Fox College Sports and the NFL Network. Comcast features Versus on low channels. Channel 44, where I get Versus on my Comcast system, is considered highly desirable digital real estate compared with channel 180, where NFLN dwells, and channel 263, the lowest channel where Comcast airs Fox College Sports. This low-channel treatment of Versus is driving the NFL Network crazy because Versus ratings are lower than NFL Network ratings and, needless to say, not remotely in shouting distance of ESPN ratings.
So now the NFL and the cable carriers are blasting each other in public, suing each other in court (a federal judge ruled in May that Comcast is not legally required to put NFLN on basic cable) and running to Congress for special favors. Meanwhile, Sunday Ticket remains available only to the select few whose places of dwelling have an unobstructed view of the southwest sky, where the DirecTV satellites hang. And, as TMQ endlessly complains, Sunday Ticket is offered on cable in Canada and Mexico, plus offered via Yahoo broadband everywhere in the world except the United States. So most American taxpayers who paid for the stadia that make NFL profits possible can't watch the games they choose -- but anyone in Canada, Mexico or Liechtenstein is free to watch any NFL game.
Sunday Ticket might come to cable in 2010, especially if local affiliates' ads can be inserted into out-of-market broadcasts, and out-of-market viewing can be folded into local affiliate ratings. Neither of those sounds like an insurmountable obstacle. So is the real strategy to combine Sunday Ticket and NFL Network into a new mega-channel? "I can assure you there are no plans to make Sunday Ticket an NFLN product," NFLN spokesman Seth Palansky told me. Well, there might not be plans …

the whole article is much longer but an interesting read.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...erbrook/071030

I can tell you the part in bold is untrue.

The NFL took Direct TV's $4 billion and ran before the NFL Network existed.

And then asked for the same amount of money that ESPN was getting for their established station. And when cable providers decided to wait(and why not, the NFL Network doesn't even generate ratings, this far into their existence) they decided to ask for MORE money.

Where do you think the money to pay for the programming is going to come from? The consumer.

And when a channel that draws in less than 1% of the cable shares of ESPN is being paid as much money as ESPN, what do you think ESPN is going to do when they go back to the bargaining table?

Cable operators have offered 2 compromises to NFL Network:

1) Pay them the money they want, and put them in a tier so that the cost for the channel only goes to those who want the channel.

2) Lower the price to equivelant rated networks on the standard tier and be placed in that tier.

The NFL Network has not budged...but yeah, it's definately all the operators faults.

10-30-2008, 05:27 PM	#28
tussinelde Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 311 Senior Member	Personally i'm going to redirect my FU to the cable companies. My carrier provides NFL network so i'm not in turmoil, but its the cable companies that are keeping NFL network off the lower tier of standard channels. And this is one of the reasons the NFL keep re-upping thier sunday ticket with direct tv instead of the cable companies(separate issue i know). This is a part of an article on espn.com: Around the time of the 2004 Sunday Ticket renewal, the NFL Network had just gone on the air, and its finances came into play. The NFL wants to charge $7 to $9 per household per year for the NFL Network on basic, a fee the carriers strongly resist. This price would make the NFL Network, a seasonal product for a specialized audience, one of the most expensive items in the national cable universe. ESPN, which is to cable what cheeseburgers are to McDonald's, charges $30 to $35 per year for multiple channels with very broad appeal. CNN charges about $5 a year to the cable carriers, NBA TV about $4, and most cable channels charge far less or nothing at all. (The ones that charge nothing subsist on advertising.) Cable carriers want the NFL Network exiled to a premium sports tier so they will meet less resistance passing the price along to consumers, but that means a far smaller audience for NFLN, and hence lower ad revenues. While the money fight was going on, Comcast founded Versus, which is vaguely a competitor to ESPN, Fox College Sports and the NFL Network. Comcast features Versus on low channels. Channel 44, where I get Versus on my Comcast system, is considered highly desirable digital real estate compared with channel 180, where NFLN dwells, and channel 263, the lowest channel where Comcast airs Fox College Sports. This low-channel treatment of Versus is driving the NFL Network crazy because Versus ratings are lower than NFL Network ratings and, needless to say, not remotely in shouting distance of ESPN ratings. So now the NFL and the cable carriers are blasting each other in public, suing each other in court (a federal judge ruled in May that Comcast is not legally required to put NFLN on basic cable) and running to Congress for special favors. Meanwhile, Sunday Ticket remains available only to the select few whose places of dwelling have an unobstructed view of the southwest sky, where the DirecTV satellites hang. And, as TMQ endlessly complains, Sunday Ticket is offered on cable in Canada and Mexico, plus offered via Yahoo broadband everywhere in the world except the United States. So most American taxpayers who paid for the stadia that make NFL profits possible can't watch the games they choose -- but anyone in Canada, Mexico or Liechtenstein is free to watch any NFL game. Sunday Ticket might come to cable in 2010, especially if local affiliates' ads can be inserted into out-of-market broadcasts, and out-of-market viewing can be folded into local affiliate ratings. Neither of those sounds like an insurmountable obstacle. So is the real strategy to combine Sunday Ticket and NFL Network into a new mega-channel? "I can assure you there are no plans to make Sunday Ticket an NFLN product," NFLN spokesman Seth Palansky told me. Well, there might not be plans … the whole article is much longer but an interesting read. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...erbrook/071030 I can tell you the part in bold is untrue. The NFL took Direct TV's $4 billion and ran before the NFL Network existed. And then asked for the same amount of money that ESPN was getting for their established station. And when cable providers decided to wait(and why not, the NFL Network doesn't even generate ratings, this far into their existence) they decided to ask for MORE money. Where do you think the money to pay for the programming is going to come from? The consumer. And when a channel that draws in less than 1% of the cable shares of ESPN is being paid as much money as ESPN, what do you think ESPN is going to do when they go back to the bargaining table? Cable operators have offered 2 compromises to NFL Network: 1) Pay them the money they want, and put them in a tier so that the cost for the channel only goes to those who want the channel. 2) Lower the price to equivelant rated networks on the standard tier and be placed in that tier. The NFL Network has not budged...but yeah, it's definately all the operators faults.
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