What’s the sound made by one hand clapping? Probably the same as the one generated by the majority of football fans over Sen. Arlen Specter’s continued grandstanding on the so-called Spygate matter.
This past week, golf pro Matt Walsh, the former videographer for the New England Patriots, emerged from his Hawaiian hideway to spill whatever beans were left to spill about his taping escapades to, in order, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Specter, the New York Times and HBO. Next week, he’s due to meet with Virgil, the maintenance man in my building.
Of course, Walsh didn’t really have anything new to say, except that he unwittingly made the Boston Globe look even more foolish (no small feat) by denying that the Patriots had secretly taped the St. Louis Rams’ pre-Super Bowl walk-through. In short order, he did confirm what had already been known and offered his thoughts on the ethics of it all after, of course, compromising his own by repeatedly taking money from the Patriots for something he says he knew was wrong at the time.
The lack of anything new didn’t stop Specter from continuing his overblown rhetoric on the subject, again invoking the notion of revisiting the NFL’s antitrust exemption, a cage Specter has rattled before. He wants an independent investigation, a congressional inquiry and, perhaps, a public flogging. He reserved judgment on what action to take next depending on the reaction of the fans. What’s the proper senatorial reaction to a yawn?
The strong guess is that if Goodell had to do this all over again, he would have conducted a more thorough inquiry the first time around and, for good measure, hung on to the evidence, if only to appease the conspiracy nuts. The fact that he didn’t only gave blowhards like Specter and a handful of New York Jets fans ammunition they didn’t need or deserve.
But that issue aside, lost in all the bluster is perspective. Taping a coach’s signals may be against the NFL operating manual, but on the scale of infractions, it trends far more toward driving 85 in a 65 MPH zone than it does armed robbery. In political terms that Specter can understand, it’s more akin to letting your feet wander in an airport bathroom stall than it is to lying to Congress about why you fired certain U.S. attorneys.
Even more to the point: what exactly is the purpose of Specter’s ongoing interest? The salient facts are known. The Patriots were punished, head coach Bill Belichick was fined. If some like Specter aren’t satisfied with the level of the punishment, personally I wasn’t happy with the way Specter didn’t make former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testify under oath to explain illegal wiretapping, but you don’t hear me continuing to bitch about it.
The saber rattling against the NFL by Specter is really nothing new and really has a deeper purpose. For context, remember the whole Philadelphia Eagles/Terrell Ownes mess? Specter stuck his nose into that as well, calling the Eagles vindictive after it sent Owens home for the rest of the season for basically placing the team under the bus and driving it over them himself. At that time, Specter too threatened to hold hearings on the NFL’s antitrust exemption. Over Owens? That should have been the tipoff.
On the surface, the Ownes situation and now Spygate make Specter seem like an overly obnoxious fan with a bit of a God complex. But if you look just below the surface, the real issue for Specter in Spygate and, for that matter, the Owens case, revolves around the NFL’s antitrust exemption and how it is negatively impacting one of his biggest campaign contributors, Pennsylvania-based Comcast.
Comcast, like a lot of cable operators wasn’t too happy when the NFL decided to re-up with DirecTV a few years ago instead of allowing cable systems to bid on the package. But things got far more interesting when the NFL Network rolled around. The reason the most of the country doesn’t get the NFL Network, at least on basic digital cable, has to do with some arguably poor marketing decisions by the NFL. When the NFL put up a package of eight late-season games for auction and then awarded the package to its own NFL Network, Comcast was fit to be tied, I tell ya because its Versus network was a bidder as well. In retaliation, Comcast moved the NFL Network from the basic digital tier to a sports tier available to subscribers for an additional fee. This, in turn, infuriated the NFL, and the parties are in a cold war over it, with the NFL filing a complaint against Comcast before the Federal Communications Commission. Meanwhile, the NFL Network is frozen out on most cable systems.
It’s always dangerous ground when taking sides in a fight between multi-billion dollar entities. Let’s just say that neither side is as innocent as it claims and neither is on the side of the fans, only the money. But these are big boys and they can settle their own disputes and don’t need Specter, doing Comcast’s bidding, getting in the middle of the food fight.
What Specter and his benefactor Comcast really want is the removal of the antitrust exemption. This would then make it illegal for the NFL to pool its broadcasting rights and bargain with the various networks, thus allowing operators like Comcast a real opportunity to bid for local broadcast rights in several markets. The NFL, for obvious reasons, likes things just the way they are. Indeed, the antitrust exemption is at the heart of the league-wide revenue sharing scheme that has benefited both the individual owners and the league for years.
Specter has been mostly an able legislator throughout his career, but his fight with the NFL isn’t even principally based. To this point, Goodell has been mostly polite to Specter, taking the high road by not mentioning the Specter/Comcast relationship. But just like the Owens/Eagles mess, Goodell knows that Spygate will fade. What won’t, though, is the underlying issues between the NFL and cable systems like Comcast and Time Warner.
Goodell knows that the real secret to getting Specter off his back is to solve his problems with Comcast. But NFL commissioners are also rumored to have a bit of a God complex as well, thus further minimizing the chance that these problems will get resolved anytime soon. In the interim, fans better get used to every so often hearing again about Spygate, Son of Spygate, and whatever other –Gate Specter can invent. With the kind of money that’s really at stake, neither side is obviously interested in trying to win this battle with moderation.
Showing posts with label Comcast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Comcast. Show all posts
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Friday, December 28, 2007
High Stakes Stare Down
The camera may never blink, but the same doesn’t go for the NFL. In a showdown between the NFL, its fans, Congress and the cable industry, it was the great and powerful NFL that melted faster than a stick of butter in a microwave oven. And because it did, the New England Patriots vs. New York Giants game this Saturday night will be blasted on seemingly every network except SoapNet.
The backdrop behind this interesting little behind-the-scenes stare down stems first from the NFL’s decision to create its own cable network, dubbed, cleverly, “The NFL Network.” In creating its own niche channel, the NFL was determined not to make what it perceived to be the mistakes of the NBA’s own network, NBA TV. What the NFL sees in regard to NBA TV is that in most markets it is relegated to a sports tier in which customers pay extra for a handful of sports-related programming or, in the case of Time Warner for example, to the digital tier, meaning customers at least have to subscribe to digital cable.
But a major difference between the two networks is in approach. NBA TV was created in partnership with AOL Time Warner back in 2002 as part of a larger deal when the NBA renewed its various network agreements. Although NBA TV does broadcast the a few games each week, it was never meant to take the place of the NBA’s pay-per-view package that is available on most cable and both satellite systems nor was it ever meant to supplant the games on TNT, ESPN or ABC or even local TV for that matter.
The NFL’s ambitions for its own network seem far greater. On the surface, it, too, seems to exist to supplement network coverage. But that is more a product of the fact that its agreements with CBS, NBC, Fox and ESPN still have another five years to go. The longer term view seems to be one of opening up an additional revenue stream as a hedge, perhaps, against a reduction in the fees that the over-the-air networks might be willing to pay in the future. When it comes to technology, five years is a lifetime and with the seemingly inevitable convergence of the internet and television, among other things, the landscape for sports and any other television broadcasting for that matter is likely to be radically different when those existing contracts expire.
Thus, if the NFL can grab an extra dollar or so a month from every cable subscriber, which is its current ambition, that’s a tidy little stash even when the costs of running its own network are deducted. To this point, though, the NFL has mostly failed in its broadcasting quest. Time Warner only wants to give it the same treatment it gives NBA TV. Comcast, which does have a deal with the NFL Network, has actually moved it to a sports tier and is now in litigation over that decision, though it’s been beating the NFL at every turn in court.
The NFL has been counting almost solely on its brand awareness as the selling point for its channel because from a programming standpoint it rivals the NASA channel for pure tediousness, even after giving due respect to the relative handful of people in this country who absolutely must have a NFL fix on a daily basis.
Here, for example, is the programming for December 28, 2007: 6 a.m.: NFL Total Access, the NFL’s version of the Golf Channel’s Golf Central, which in turn is the Golf Channel’s version of ESPN’s SportsCenter. If you missed it at 6 a.m., don’t worry, it replays at 7 and 8 a.m. as well. At 9 a.m. is a documentary on the 1972 Dolphins. At 10 a.m. is a truncated replay of the Patriots/Cowboys game from October, followed by a truncated version of the Patriots/Colts game from November. At 1 p.m. is something called “Classic Games”, which is full replay of the Patriots/Eagles game from November. At 4 p.m. is “Point After” which takes the viewers on a scintillating review of the daily press conferences held by NFL coaches. About the only thing worse than attending a Bill Belichick press conference has to be watching a replay of it.
Then at 6 p.m. you get some sort of college football bowl game preview show, followed by “Put Up Your Dukes”, which is described as a look at the day’s hot topics and headlines in the NFL. This shouldn’t be confused with “NFL Total Access,” which follows, even though it too provides a look at the day’s hot topics and headlines. You then have the Texas Bowl, a top flight match-up between TCU and Houston, followed by repeats of NFL Total Access and Classic Games. Unquestionably that’s 24 hours of restaurant-quality programming.
The only real change in the programming on a day-to-day basis is late in the football season when the NFL Network shows games on Thursday and Saturday evenings. In reality, it’s the access to these games that supposedly is the selling point. But even then the lineup is hardly compelling, unless the outcome of your fantasy football league depends on what happened in the Broncos/Texans or the Bengals/49ers game.
Well, that is it wasn’t considered too compelling until what appeared to be a late-season throw away game between the Patriots and the Giants found its way on the NFL Network this year. When it first appeared on the schedule no one figured that this game would have potentially historic implications. But it does now and this would seem to have been the NFL’s best bargaining chip in its ongoing battle with the cable systems. And it would have been had the NFL not blinked in the stare down.
When it looked like the Patriots might actually go undefeated and the game against the Giants would be the final regular season obstacle, the NFL was indeed licking its chops. In mid-December, NFL Network spokesman Seth Palansky told the USA Today that there was “zero chance” that the network would allow the game to be broadcast on any other channel. In fact, he said there was as much chance of that changing as there was “raindrops going back into the clouds.” (Note: by contract, when a game is broadcast exclusively on cable, such as on ESPN or the NFL Network, the game also must be offered to the local stations, for a fee, in each participating team’s market.)
Well, apparently Palansky doesn’t actually speak for the NFL or else there are a whole lot of raindrops heading back into the clouds. The NFL tried to leverage the game in its negotiations with Time Warner by offering to give them the game for “free” on a basic cable tier in exchange for agreeing to let a neutral arbitrator resolve their long-standing dispute. Time Warner immediately rejected for the same reason anyone running his or her own business would similarly reject letting an arbitrator make its business decisions.
Rather than sit and wait for the masses to descend on the local Time Warner offices or at least for some misguided fan to start the inevitable online petition, the NFL instead folded its tent and decided instead to give away the game anyway to CBS and NBC. No word on whether the NFL is making Palansky himself put each and every raindrop back into each and every cloud.
In announcing this development, you had to like the pluck of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who insisted that the league was doing this because it was in the best interests of its fans. If that were true, then wouldn’t it follow that pulling games from the over-the-air broadcast partners in the first place and putting them exclusively on the NFL Network wasn’t in the best interests of the fans? Probably, though Goodell would never admit as much. In fact, as if to throw a bone to Palansky and his foolish bravado, Goodell said that the league’s commitment to the NFL Network was stronger than ever.
That may be true, but if it is, then Goodell has a funny way of showing that, too. By voluntarily giving up the one trump card he lucked into in the form of the Patriots/Giants game that might have actually pushed Time Warner and Comcast into some sort of customer backlash, Goodell essentially admitted that he’s in a battle he can’t win.
If the NFL Network, or its wannabe little brother, the Big Ten Network, ever want to get a deal with the major cable companies on the favorable terms they crave, simply put they have to withhold the product from the fans and let nature take its course. And by withholding product, that doesn’t mean withholding some meaningless Bengals/49ers game, in the case of the NFL, or Ohio State vs. Akron in the case of the Big Ten Network. For the strategy to work they have to be willing to pull the pin out of the grenade by withholding a potentially historic game like the Patriots/Giants or, say, the Super Bowl. For the Big Ten, they have to have the guts to withhold Ohio State vs. Michigan. Anything less and people just shrug.
But this isn’t going to happen anytime soon, if ever. Goodell can play his “best interests of the fans” card all he wants. The truth is that Goodell made the decision because it was in the best interests of the league. The last thing it needs is more outside oversight and the NFL already was getting more than just a few inquiries from Congress about its broadcast plans, and that was well before the Patriots/Giants game took on such meaning.
Just over a year ago, when the NFL first started broadcasting a handful of games on its own network, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, indicated that his committee was “intrigued” by the league’s plans, particularly whether they violated the Sports Broadcasting Act. By intrigued, he meant concerned.
The rumblings got a bit louder after Palansky’s statement earlier this month, mainly because while local stations in Boston and New York were going to get the Patriots/Giants game, stations outside that immediate market where many fans of both teams live could not. Those additional rumblings proved to be too much for Goodell and the NFL. For as he and his partners surely understand, the only thing that could kill their broadcasting dreams more definitively than the lack of a deal with either Time Warner or Comcast is Congress in general and a re-working of the anti-trust laws in particular.
The backdrop behind this interesting little behind-the-scenes stare down stems first from the NFL’s decision to create its own cable network, dubbed, cleverly, “The NFL Network.” In creating its own niche channel, the NFL was determined not to make what it perceived to be the mistakes of the NBA’s own network, NBA TV. What the NFL sees in regard to NBA TV is that in most markets it is relegated to a sports tier in which customers pay extra for a handful of sports-related programming or, in the case of Time Warner for example, to the digital tier, meaning customers at least have to subscribe to digital cable.
But a major difference between the two networks is in approach. NBA TV was created in partnership with AOL Time Warner back in 2002 as part of a larger deal when the NBA renewed its various network agreements. Although NBA TV does broadcast the a few games each week, it was never meant to take the place of the NBA’s pay-per-view package that is available on most cable and both satellite systems nor was it ever meant to supplant the games on TNT, ESPN or ABC or even local TV for that matter.
The NFL’s ambitions for its own network seem far greater. On the surface, it, too, seems to exist to supplement network coverage. But that is more a product of the fact that its agreements with CBS, NBC, Fox and ESPN still have another five years to go. The longer term view seems to be one of opening up an additional revenue stream as a hedge, perhaps, against a reduction in the fees that the over-the-air networks might be willing to pay in the future. When it comes to technology, five years is a lifetime and with the seemingly inevitable convergence of the internet and television, among other things, the landscape for sports and any other television broadcasting for that matter is likely to be radically different when those existing contracts expire.
Thus, if the NFL can grab an extra dollar or so a month from every cable subscriber, which is its current ambition, that’s a tidy little stash even when the costs of running its own network are deducted. To this point, though, the NFL has mostly failed in its broadcasting quest. Time Warner only wants to give it the same treatment it gives NBA TV. Comcast, which does have a deal with the NFL Network, has actually moved it to a sports tier and is now in litigation over that decision, though it’s been beating the NFL at every turn in court.
The NFL has been counting almost solely on its brand awareness as the selling point for its channel because from a programming standpoint it rivals the NASA channel for pure tediousness, even after giving due respect to the relative handful of people in this country who absolutely must have a NFL fix on a daily basis.
Here, for example, is the programming for December 28, 2007: 6 a.m.: NFL Total Access, the NFL’s version of the Golf Channel’s Golf Central, which in turn is the Golf Channel’s version of ESPN’s SportsCenter. If you missed it at 6 a.m., don’t worry, it replays at 7 and 8 a.m. as well. At 9 a.m. is a documentary on the 1972 Dolphins. At 10 a.m. is a truncated replay of the Patriots/Cowboys game from October, followed by a truncated version of the Patriots/Colts game from November. At 1 p.m. is something called “Classic Games”, which is full replay of the Patriots/Eagles game from November. At 4 p.m. is “Point After” which takes the viewers on a scintillating review of the daily press conferences held by NFL coaches. About the only thing worse than attending a Bill Belichick press conference has to be watching a replay of it.
Then at 6 p.m. you get some sort of college football bowl game preview show, followed by “Put Up Your Dukes”, which is described as a look at the day’s hot topics and headlines in the NFL. This shouldn’t be confused with “NFL Total Access,” which follows, even though it too provides a look at the day’s hot topics and headlines. You then have the Texas Bowl, a top flight match-up between TCU and Houston, followed by repeats of NFL Total Access and Classic Games. Unquestionably that’s 24 hours of restaurant-quality programming.
The only real change in the programming on a day-to-day basis is late in the football season when the NFL Network shows games on Thursday and Saturday evenings. In reality, it’s the access to these games that supposedly is the selling point. But even then the lineup is hardly compelling, unless the outcome of your fantasy football league depends on what happened in the Broncos/Texans or the Bengals/49ers game.
Well, that is it wasn’t considered too compelling until what appeared to be a late-season throw away game between the Patriots and the Giants found its way on the NFL Network this year. When it first appeared on the schedule no one figured that this game would have potentially historic implications. But it does now and this would seem to have been the NFL’s best bargaining chip in its ongoing battle with the cable systems. And it would have been had the NFL not blinked in the stare down.
When it looked like the Patriots might actually go undefeated and the game against the Giants would be the final regular season obstacle, the NFL was indeed licking its chops. In mid-December, NFL Network spokesman Seth Palansky told the USA Today that there was “zero chance” that the network would allow the game to be broadcast on any other channel. In fact, he said there was as much chance of that changing as there was “raindrops going back into the clouds.” (Note: by contract, when a game is broadcast exclusively on cable, such as on ESPN or the NFL Network, the game also must be offered to the local stations, for a fee, in each participating team’s market.)
Well, apparently Palansky doesn’t actually speak for the NFL or else there are a whole lot of raindrops heading back into the clouds. The NFL tried to leverage the game in its negotiations with Time Warner by offering to give them the game for “free” on a basic cable tier in exchange for agreeing to let a neutral arbitrator resolve their long-standing dispute. Time Warner immediately rejected for the same reason anyone running his or her own business would similarly reject letting an arbitrator make its business decisions.
Rather than sit and wait for the masses to descend on the local Time Warner offices or at least for some misguided fan to start the inevitable online petition, the NFL instead folded its tent and decided instead to give away the game anyway to CBS and NBC. No word on whether the NFL is making Palansky himself put each and every raindrop back into each and every cloud.
In announcing this development, you had to like the pluck of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who insisted that the league was doing this because it was in the best interests of its fans. If that were true, then wouldn’t it follow that pulling games from the over-the-air broadcast partners in the first place and putting them exclusively on the NFL Network wasn’t in the best interests of the fans? Probably, though Goodell would never admit as much. In fact, as if to throw a bone to Palansky and his foolish bravado, Goodell said that the league’s commitment to the NFL Network was stronger than ever.
That may be true, but if it is, then Goodell has a funny way of showing that, too. By voluntarily giving up the one trump card he lucked into in the form of the Patriots/Giants game that might have actually pushed Time Warner and Comcast into some sort of customer backlash, Goodell essentially admitted that he’s in a battle he can’t win.
If the NFL Network, or its wannabe little brother, the Big Ten Network, ever want to get a deal with the major cable companies on the favorable terms they crave, simply put they have to withhold the product from the fans and let nature take its course. And by withholding product, that doesn’t mean withholding some meaningless Bengals/49ers game, in the case of the NFL, or Ohio State vs. Akron in the case of the Big Ten Network. For the strategy to work they have to be willing to pull the pin out of the grenade by withholding a potentially historic game like the Patriots/Giants or, say, the Super Bowl. For the Big Ten, they have to have the guts to withhold Ohio State vs. Michigan. Anything less and people just shrug.
But this isn’t going to happen anytime soon, if ever. Goodell can play his “best interests of the fans” card all he wants. The truth is that Goodell made the decision because it was in the best interests of the league. The last thing it needs is more outside oversight and the NFL already was getting more than just a few inquiries from Congress about its broadcast plans, and that was well before the Patriots/Giants game took on such meaning.
Just over a year ago, when the NFL first started broadcasting a handful of games on its own network, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, indicated that his committee was “intrigued” by the league’s plans, particularly whether they violated the Sports Broadcasting Act. By intrigued, he meant concerned.
The rumblings got a bit louder after Palansky’s statement earlier this month, mainly because while local stations in Boston and New York were going to get the Patriots/Giants game, stations outside that immediate market where many fans of both teams live could not. Those additional rumblings proved to be too much for Goodell and the NFL. For as he and his partners surely understand, the only thing that could kill their broadcasting dreams more definitively than the lack of a deal with either Time Warner or Comcast is Congress in general and a re-working of the anti-trust laws in particular.
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