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NFL Boss To Clip Comcast, Time Warner

Goodell To Tell House Subcommitte That Cable Discriminates Against NFL Network

By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 3/4/2008 11:36:00 AM

Washington – NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, in House testimony set for delivery Wednesday morning, plans to accuse Comcast and Time Warner of discriminating against the NFL Network while faulting the Federal Communications Commission for ineffectively patrolling program carriage laws designed to protect independent channels.

“Dominant cable operators have the motive and the means to discriminate against independent programmers. History demonstrates that they have done so and continue to do so,” Goodell says in testimony obtained Tuesday by Multichannel News.

Goodell is to appear before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet along with Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt, ESPN president George Bodenheimer, and DirecTV executive vice president Derek Chang.

In his testimony, Britt says that the NFL can’t have it both ways: demanding broad access to cable homes for the league-owned NFL Network while denying cable access to NFL Sunday Ticket, the out-of-market game package available only on DirecTV.

“The NFL in particular is being especially disingenuous in appealing to the government to compel distributors to carry one of [its] services – the NFL Network – on broadly distributed tiers while simultaneTime Warner Cable's Glenn Brittously defending its right to limit distribution of its more appealing service – the NFL Sunday Ticket Package – to a single distributor, DirecTV,” Britt says.

Bodenheimer, in his comments, calls for governmental restraint in the cable programming market. ESPN in recent years has been concerned about government-imposed a la carte mandates, which would allow consumers to pay for only those channels they wish to view.

“Given the fierce competition in both programming and distribution, I strongly urge you to refrain from intervening in these markets,” Bodenheimer says.

Goodell devotes much of his testimony to the NFL Network’s clash with Time Warner, which does not carry the network, and Comcast, which puts it on a sports tier.

The operators' refusal to put the NFL Network before all their cable subscribers was discriminatory, Goodell says, because the cable companies don’t threat their affiliated sports channels the same way.

“The cable giants’ bottleneck leverage gives them the power to discriminate unfairly against independent programmers, even those with programming as popular as that of the NFL,” Goodell says.

Goodell’s testimony fails to mention that the NFL Network had exclusive rights to just eiRandy Moss catches recrod 23rd TD in NFL Network 2007 season finaleght regular-season primetime games near the end of the season and sought a premium license fee from cable providers.

Goodell says the FCC has the tools to protect independent programmers that can’t get cable carriage but has done a poor job of using them.

 “The process adopted by the FCC 15 years ago — as it has been implemented — is ineffective. It is slow, expensive, and inherently protective of cable operators — in a phrase, it is compellingly in need of change,” Goodell says.

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