[Infowarrior] - NFL backtracks on Patriots-Giants telecasting

[Richard Forno]

Patriots-Giants Game Now on NBC and CBS
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: December 27, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/27/sports/football/27tv.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slo
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The Patriots-Giants game, which was to be broadcast Saturday night to less
than half the country by the NFL Network, will be available to fans
throughout the nation under an agreement reached Wednesday by NBC and CBS to
simulcast it.

The 15-0 Patriots are attempting to become the first N.F.L. team since the
1972 Miami Dolphins to finish the regular season unbeaten. Miami went on to
win the Super Bowl and finish at 17-0.

The decision to have NBC and CBS give the NFL Network the exposure it has so
far lacked came in the face of mounting Congressional pressure, a threat to
examine the antitrust exemption the National Football League has to
negotiate its television contracts.

³I think the pressure was one thing and that had an impact,² said Pat
Bowlen, the owner of the Denver Broncos. ³But you look at the significance
of the game, of New England possibly going undefeated, and we wanted it to
be seen by the whole country.²

Representative Joseph Courtney, Democrat of Connecticut, praised the
decision by N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell to expand the game¹s
availability. Without the simulcasts, tens of thousands of fans in the state
‹ which has loyalties divided between the Patriot and the Giants ‹ would not
have seen the game.

³It was the right pressure point for Congress to step in and say to the
N.F.L., ŒYou¹re a protected industry and you have to look out for the best
interests of the fans,¹² he said.

The NFL Network is available to 43 million cable and satellite subscribers,
but it is not carried by major cable operators like Time Warner, Cablevision
and Charter. Comcast carries the network only on its digital sports tier,
which requires an extra fee.

NBC and CBS will use the NFL Network¹s game production, including the
announcers Cris Collinsworth and Bryant Gumbel. They will not pay an extra
rights fee ‹ together the networks pay the league a combined average yearly
fee of $1.2 billion ‹ and will divide revenues from selling 18 30-second
commercials with local stations.

The simulcast will mark the first time since Super Bowl I in 1967 that the
same N.F.L. game will be carried by more than one network. In that instance,
when Green Bay beat Kansas City, CBS and NBC produced their own versions of
the game.

If the NFL Network had not existed, the Patriots-Giants game almost
certainly would have been on CBS; but it might have been a Sunday night game
on NBC.

³I¹m intrigued by the historic nature of two over-the-air networks carrying
the game,² said Dick Ebersol, the chairman of NBC Universal Sports. ³It¹ll
be fun and will give the NFL Network a chance to exhibit their wares.²

Ebersol said that he suggested a simulcast to Steve Bornstein, the NFL
Network¹s chief executive, in October but felt as recently as last week that
the idea might not come to fruition. In recent days, conversations
accelerated among the league, Ebersol and Leslie Moonves, the chief
executive of CBS.

Without CBS and NBC, the game would have been seen only by the NFL Network¹s
43 million subscribers and 10.8 million other TV homes in the Patriots and
the Giants¹ designated home markets of Boston-Manchester, N.H., and New
York-New Jersey.

Bornstein said the decision to broaden distribution for the game came after
his realization that cable operators did not want to negotiate a deal.

³We were optimistic they would come to their senses, but it just didn¹t
happen,² he said, then added: ³I thought they¹d react to the fans¹ interest;
I was wrong. I thought they wanted quality programming to sell and promote
and differentiate themselves, but I was wrong.²

He played down the impact of pleas made by the Congressional delegations of
Connecticut, Vermont and Rhode Island, who wrote to Goodell asking that the
game be made widely available on local broadcast stations in New England
outside the Patriots¹ primary market. ³We had some of the same interests as
the politicians, but this was a reaction to our fans,² Bornstein said.

As recently as Dec. 21, in a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of
Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Goodell wrote that
³despite Vermonters¹ affection for the two teams,² Vermont ³is not ‹ and
never has been ‹ a Œhome market¹ of either the Patriots or the Giants for
purposes of our cable simulcast rules.²

Under those rules, ESPN must make its games available to stations in the
teams¹ home markets for those residents who do not or cannot get cable. But
unlike the NFL Network, ESPN is available virtually everywhere. When ESPN¹s
games are simulcast on local stations, fans of the two teams outside the
home markets (like Giants fans in Albany) are almost certain to be able to
see them on cable.

The league¹s refusal to stretch the boundaries of the home market for the
Patriots-Giants game would have left many viewers in the dark.

Bornstein insisted that efforts at fully distributing the NFL Network are
hamstrung because as an independent network it is not owned wholly or in
part by a major cable