NFL Network’s Busy Off-Season
Formal FCC Complaint About Comcast Latest Play Call
By Mike Reynolds & Larry Barrett -- Multichannel News, 4/19/2008 4:15:00 AM
While teams and fans gear up for next weekend’s NFL draft, the pro football league’s in-house network is doing some prep work of its own in what has become a very busy off-season.
NFL Network on April 10 said it would file a formal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission, accusing Comcast of discriminatory and anti-competitive treatment.
In a statement, NFL Network said it has served Comcast with the required 10-day notice of its intent to file the FCC complaint in which it will argue that the nation’s largest cable operator’s decision to place the network on a premium sports tier for its more than 24 million subscribers while keeping other sports channels that it owns on expanded basic tiers amounts to a violation of the 1992 Cable Act.
“Comcast has taken NFL Network away from millions of fans and placed it on a costly sports tier,” Steve Bornstein, NFL Network’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “We don’t believe that Comcast should charge consumers extra for our network while making sports channels it owns available on a less costly basis. After months of trying to get Comcast to negotiate fair treatment, we have been forced to turn to the FCC.”
Comcast, buoyed by a May 2007 ruling, which is now being reexamined, migrated NFL Network from its most widely distributed digital package to a sports tier, a move that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell says cost the service some 8 million subscribers with the operator alone.
Similarly, Dish Network, responding to the NFL’s decision to simulcast the Dec. 28 game pitting the then undefeated New England Patriots against the New York Giants on CBS and NBC, dropped NFL Network on Feb. 20 from its “free preview” in the “America’s Top 100” package to the “America’s Top 200” package, sacking some 4 million subs as a result. The NFL Network on Feb. 27 said it would file suit.
Other distributors, notably No. 2 cable player Time Warner Cable, still do not carry NFL Network, balking at a game plan calling for digital-basic positioning and a monthly 70 cents per subscriber fee, for what they deem to be a service that has limited value outside of its eight-game primetime slate.
In its forthcoming complaint, NFL Network will argue that Comcast’s alleged discrimination “causes serious anti-competitive and anti-consumer harms in the viewing, advertising and programming markets.”
It also claims Comcast is now retaliating against NFL Network because the league decided not to sell eight regular-season games to Comcast’s OLN, now Versus network, back in January 2006, in part, because “Comcast wanted an unacceptable condition in the deal that would have violated the NFL’s longstanding policy of free television coverage in the cities of the two competing teams.”
NFL games for which cable networks have secured the rights always air on local broadcast affiliates in participating teams’ markets.
Now in some 31 million homes, NFL Network officials will also argue that the channel produces higher average cable ratings and better individual event telecasts than Comcast-owned Versus or Golf Channel, results that is says belies the operator’s claim that the pro football network, which supports America’s most popular game, is niche programming that doesn’t merit broader distribution.
Elsewhere, NFL Network has received support in the South Carolina legislature, where a bill, the subject of a hearing before the House Public Utilities Subcommittee, states that a cable company has to treat a competitor's channel the same way in which it treats a channel in which it has an ownership stake.
In Illinois, an NFL Network-backed bill would compel cable operators into arbitration in their carriage disputes with networks. The Illinois State Senate Executive Committee April 10 acted to send the Fair Access and Independent Resolution Act to the full Senate. SB 879 would create a “neutral process” with an outside arbitrator when independent programmers can't make a deal with cable operators.
In the booth, NFL Network is in the process of a finding a replacement for often-criticized Bryant Gumbel, who resigned his play-by-play calling duties for its Thursday and Saturday Night Football telecasts.
Whoever succeeds Gumbel in working alongside color analyst Cris Collingsworth will grab the microphone a bit earlier than NFL Network did in 2006 and 2007, when its game slate kicked off on Thanksgiving night. This season, NFL Network’s first contest fires off the scrimmage line Nov. 6, during the league’s 10th week with the Denver Broncos visiting the Cleveland Browns at 8:15 p.m. (ET).
The schedule, which only features one match-up of 2007 playoff teams, the Dec, 18 Indianapolis Colts-Jacksonville Jaguars confrontation, has also been revamped, comprising seven Thursday night games (from five) and just one Saturday night affair (from three). NFL Network doesn’t have a game in the league’s concluding 17th week this season.
