Your NFL Network Update

As your primary source for updates on the continuing feud between the NFL Network and the cable companies, be advised that the Texas Bowl between Rutgers and Kansas State will be available on both Time Warner and Cablevision. As a public service, here's all you need to know:

Time Warner customers who subscribe to the "digital" package will receive free access to the NFL Network on channel 199 until Saturday at 8pm. This gives Time Warner subscribers the ability to watch both the Texas Bowl and the Insight Bowl (Texas Tech vs. Minnesota). The end of TWC's free access coincides with the start of the Giants-Redskins game. However, New York and Washington-area subscribers will be able to watch this game on free local television, as required by law.

Cablevision, on the other hand, is providing free access to the NFL Network only for the Texas Bowl. All Cablevision subscribers will be able to watch the game, not just digital subscribers. Channel listings are available here. Again, local fans of the Giants and Redskins will find the Saturday night game on regular TV.

A few items of note:
- The NFL Network's page describing this week's free access to its channel (the "freeview") contains at least one incorrect channel listing - for Cablevision. This could be a simple typo, or - conspiracy theory alert! - it could be the NFL Network making it more difficult to find the game in New Jersey, where Cablevision has a monopoly. Customers who can't find Rutgers on TV will blame the cable company, not the channel. We've already seen that New Jersey state politicians were planning to pressure Cablevision to include the NFL Network in its regular channel package until Cablevision agreed to show the Texas Bowl. The NFL could be sending Cablevision customers to the wrong channel so they get pissed and call their congressmen, who then stick it to Cablevision. Or it could just be a typo.


- If you clicked on the links above, you saw that Time Warner Cable is using NFL Network imagery on its website to promote the freeview but Cablevision is not. This bodes well for TWC subscribers who are willing to pay for the NFL Network. Time Warner's display of logos, fonts and other NFL-themed imagery is valuable advertising for the NFL Network, so this is likely a show of goodwill by TWC in its negotiations to permanently carry the channel. Expect the NFL Network to be available on Time Warner Cable in time for the 2007 season.


- The freeview is not available in high definition for TWC and Cablevision customers. I know this in the first case because I called Time Warner and asked, and in the second case because I am a Cablevision subscriber, so I can see that the channel they're reserving for the freeview is not an HD channel. I tried calling the NFL Network (310-840-4635) to find out whether the game is being filmed in HD, but the switchboard doesn't open until noon Eastern time. I'll find out and let you know. I believe that the NFL Network, a new cable channel looking for subscribers, would be smart enough to show its entire freeview in HD as a way to separate itself from crappy little startups like, oh, CBS, but I'm not yet sure.

Watch NFL Network For Free

Editor's note: Click here for a quick recap of the controversy between the NFL Network and the cable companies.

The NFL has offered New York-area cable companies seven days of free access to the NFL Network during the last week of the year. This isn't an unusual move by Roger Goodell and company. Networks like HBO ocassionally provide free access in an effort to gain viewers. It's a moneymaking play for networks, because customers who watch the premium content during the free period are more likely to pay for it when the trial run is over.

Make no mistake, the NFL is not acting altruistically here. By making this offer to Cablevision and Time Warner Cable, the NFL Network gets the New York viewers it's been missing, and it gets to associate itself with the word "free" in the public eye. More importantly, the free access period happens to include December 28, the date of the Texas Bowl between Rutgers and Kansas State. The Royal We noted that the NFL Network owns the right to broadcast this game, so by allowing viewers in New York and New Jersey to watch for free, the NFL avoids an intervention from Garden State politicians, who might have otherwised forced the NFL to lower its per-subscriber asking price in order to get Rutgers on the air.

Cablevision realizes all of the above, and has already announced that it has accepted the NFL's generous offer to show the Rutgers bowl game. Left unsaid? Cablevision will not be showing any other NFL Network programming during the free week. It seems like a neat slap in the face to the NFL, which wouldn't generate NY/NJ ratings for its signature content (NFL games). However, it's mostly an empty gesture because the Giants-Redskins game that Saturday night (scheduled for the NFL Network) will be broadcast on over-the-air television in those teams' local market for all to see, as required by law. In other words, New York viewers get the Giants game anyway, probably on channel 11 or channel 9.

Both the NFL and the cable companies continue to screw over their customers. Neither side deserves our support. And as a public service, here's an end run around them both. It's called Sopcast. Download the free software at Sopcast.org, then click over to a blog called Streaming NFL Games, where they'll tell you the code to enter into your Sopcast window to pick up the live feed of the NFL Network, with no commercials!

Enjoy, from your friends at Get Untracked.

NFL Network Can't Beat Dog Show, Smackdown, Skins Game

They've finally posted the television ratings for Thanksgiving week. The Broncos-Chiefs game shown (they say) on the NFL Network doesn't crack the top 14, beaten by such "sports" programming as the National Dog Show, with 4.8 milliion households, Friday Night Smackdown, with 2.8 million households, and The Skins Game, with 2.3 million households. Publicly available sports ratings only list broadcast programs, but it says here that the only 1.8 million households watched the football game.

The NFL Network claims it has 41 million subscribers. For the Thanksgiving night game to have drawn more eyes than some exhibition golf event, a mere seven percent of subscribers needed to watch the game. Aside from the chalk covering in the first two weeks, this tells us two things:

1) Most who currently subscribe to the NFL Network do so unwittingly because they don't care about the games. The cable companies argue that it makes little financial sense to put this channel on the "basic cable" tier because ratings prove that over 93% of cable customers who have access to the NFL Network aren't interested in this programming. However, the NFL Network responds that most cable channels are provided in just this fashion. You don't want Lifetime or Oxygen channels, but you pay for them anyway.

2) The cities likely to give the NFL Network its highest possible viewership still can't access the channel without subscribing to a satellite service. Cities served by Time Warner include Buffalo, Cleveland, Dallas, Cincinnati, L.A., New York, Houston, Charlotte and Green Bay. Then there's a company called Bright House Cable, which monopolizes Tampa, Orlando and Indianapolis. Charter Cable won't let you watch the NFL Network in St. Louis or Madison.

Both sides have spent millions campaigning for your vote, and I'm not pleased with either of them. If cable companies weren't granted monopoly powers, I could subcribe to Verizon's FIOS service and get the NFL Network. If the NFL didn't allow DirecTV a monopoly over NFL Sunday Ticket (subscribing to Sunday Ticket gets you the NFL Network), I could buy that package and watch all the games I wished. Both parties in this debate are anti-consumer. How about some free market cable franchise reform?

Cable Companies -2.5 NFL Network

Next Thursday the NFL will offer up its traditional Thanksgiving games. The Detroit Lions have played every Thanksgiving since 1934 (except for the 1939-44 commercial break otherwise known as "World War II"), and the Dallas Cowboys made it a doubleheader starting in 1966. Does anybody reading this remember a Thanksgiving without exactly two NFL games?

So imagine my surprise when I learned that, starting this year, a third Thanksgiving game will be played. This year's night game will feature the Chiefs and Broncos. Thing is, you can't watch that contest unless your cable provider allows you to subscribe to the NFL Network. I should know: I live in the metro-New York area, where the two cable companies, Time Warner and Cablevision, don't make the channel available at any price. The battle's been brewing since July, when the NFL held the Thursday night package back from network bidders, leaving big bucks on the table in order to televise the games on its own cable channel.

The gist of the fight is as follows: Cable companies argue that the NFL Network is trying to gouge them with per-subscriber rates of 70 cents each, up from the channel's current price of about a quarter. The NFL Network responds that it has the country's most-watched programming, so the cable companies should pony up. For comparison's sake, ESPN is the most expensive channel for cable companies to provide, at nearly $3 per subsriber. As the parties head back to the bargaining table for one last week of negotiations, let's handicap this matchup.

Home Field Advantage

The game's to be played on the cable companies' turf because they own the infrastructure necessary to bring programming to your home. If everyone's home had an "unobstructed view of the Southern sky," we'd all have already switched to DirecTV to buy the Sunday Ticket package. As it stands, if you want sports programming, you pay for cable (and probably digital cable so you get the HD feed). It's the only way. Advantage: Cable companies. As we know, home field in the NFL is worth 3 points.

Talent

CBS and Fox paid $8 billion to broadcast the NFL through 2011 because pro football games are the most consistent ratings-generators in the television business (crappy MNF games like Panthers-Bucs or Seahawks-Raiders notwithstanding). The NFL Network knows it has a tremendous product, so it can realistically ask for high subscriber fees. However, cable companies don't want to pay (70 cents) * (all their subscribers) for a network most people wouldn't watch and that, oh yeah, happens to have a measly eight NFL games during only two months of the year. That's a solid argument. Slight advantage: Cable companies. This moves the line another point and a half.

Coaching

The cable companies have been fighting this battle for years. You might remember the fight over the Yankees' YES Network or the fight over the Mets' SportsNet New York. They've got a gameplan: They offer to put the channel on a special "sports tier" of programming for which subscribers may pay extra if they choose. This way the people who subscribe to cable for the Food Network or MTV or HBO don't have to pay extra for sports they're not going to watch. On the other side of the boardroom is Steve Bornstein. He used to run ESPN, so he knows how important sports are to people like you and me. He'll use the time-tested strategy pioneered by George Steinbrenner and the YES lawyers - people really care about watching this stuff, so you better give it to them. That tactic works if viewers can't see 90% of a team's games over six months of a baseball season, but I'm not sure it'll work for a random slate of eight NFL games. Slight advantage: Cable companies. The line moves one more point.

The Mob

I'm not referring to the Gambino crime family or point-shaving, though the pun was intended. I mean the dirty, unwashed public, otherwise known as the millions of television viewers who pay the subscriber fees keeping cable companies in business. The great unknown is how much of a stink people like us will make. When Cablevision refused to carry the Mets' regional network, SNY, so many Mets fans complained that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg inserted himself into the negotiation and the parties eventually reached a compromise. There's precedent for public opinion working hard against the cable companies, especially since each cable company is a monopoly in its viewing area. Advantage: NFL Network, but it's not the lock that you had with local baseball teams. My guess is that there's enough football on free tv and ESPN this time of year that those eight NFL games might not be missed. Move the line three points the other way.


Check my math, but totaling the above puts the cable companies as 2.5-point favorites going into this last week. I think you'll get the chance to watch the NFL Network games, but you'll probably have to pay for the special sports tier. Hell, Cablevision doesn't even offer ESPN2-HD on basic digital cable, so I don't see Cablevision handing the NFL Network a coveted basic cable spot. At least the NFL can rest assured that they can keep running their float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.