“I would tell you that I don’t see that happening before the games, but I try to remain optimistic… Our dialogues are open with (Cablevision and Time Warner), but right now we’re not getting a lot of traction.” – Steve Bornstein, NFL Network
With eight National Football League telecasts starting one week from Thursday, the NFL Network is the fifth national television outlet for the juggernaut football league. With only eight games, it is also the outlet of least priority to the league. Failure for games on the NFL Network will be disheartening for the NFL, but will pale in comparison to the massive successes of Monday Night Football on ESPN and games on FOX, NBC and CBS.
That being said, it must anger the all-mighty NFL that cable companies are refusing to bend to its demands. Time Warner wants to “carry the NFL Network. . . on a sports tier so that it won’t increase the rates for all of its customers.”
That sounds more than fair. Monday Night Football on ESPN gets a massive audience for cable. However, that audience is approximately eight to nine percent of all television households with cable. Games on the NFL Network will likely get, even with full carriage, around a four to five rating (on par with the NBA Conference Finals on TNT and ESPN and Major League Baseball’s Division Series on ESPN). In other words, ninety percent of the cable-having population will not be watching football. Why should they have to pay for games they won’t watch?
It’s essentially the same situation as having taxpayers pay for a new stadium for a sports team that most of them don’t follow.
NFL Network games exist really only to fill a niche. The casual fan is not going to sit down on a Thursday or Saturday night to watch these games. The rating may be impressive for cable, but that still doesn’t justify a price hike for the majority that don’t watch or (gasp) care about the NFL. The people who are going to watch Thursday and Saturday night games are the same people who are going to shell out the money to get the sports tier in the first place. If the NFL wants to get its network and its games on the air, it needs to realize that it is what it is: a very popular sports league with a very large audience–but not an out-of-control dynamo with the entire nation’s undivided attention. Remember: Sunday night games still keep losing to Desperate Housewives.
