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Once Again, It’s On
The New York Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday that Comcast can move NFL Network to a sports tier brought to mind something about the cable industry that has never made sense to me.
Why is it that networks I have yet to watch for a single minute are able to use the fact that they’re available in my apartment as leverage in negotiating for ad dollars?
Off the top of my head (and cheating with a quick look at my cable system’s lineup), the list of prominent networks I have not watched for one second in 2007 includes: Lifetime Television, Oxygen, A&E Network, Food Network, Home & Garden Television, Fine Living, DIY, C-SPAN, USA Network, Sci Fi Channel, HSN, TLC, Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, WE tv, ABC Family, BET, Travel Channel, GSN, Galavisión, mun2, Speed Channel, QVC and Hallmark Channel.
Does this mean I don’t think these cable networks are important? Absolutely not.
Does this mean I don’t think these networks fill very important niches? Of course not.
Does this mean that, in the 12-plus years I’ve been with Multichannel News, I haven’t developed a great deal of respect for the efforts of most of these networks? Hardly.
It’s just a matter of personal preference. For various reasons, the programming on the networks I mentioned doesn’t appeal to me as a viewer, despite the respect I might have for it as an editor.
Yet, for the purposes of advertising rates, I’m counted as a subscriber to all of those channels.
Why does this bother me so much?
As a sports fan, battles over total households, penetration and tier placement have cost me the opportunity to watch an untold number of games on my cable system at home — in one extreme case, an entire baseball season and an entire basketball season.
Do I agree that someone who wouldn’t know a football if it crashed through their window and hit them in the forehead shouldn’t have to pay for NFL Network? Absolutely. But why must I pay for networks with programming geared toward women, or kids, or families, or people whose idea of cooking far transcends the microwave, or people who can actually use their two hands to build and fix things, or sales pitches claiming I can’t tell the difference between cubic zirconia and real diamonds?
I’d like to think that when the 2007 NFL season kicks off in September, I’ll be able to tune in NFL Network. But based on the past, I might as well reserve my spot at the bar now for that channel’s Thursday- and Saturday-night games, because I doubt the signals will make their way into my home.
