By Jesse Temple
Talk about trying to have your cake and eat it, too.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has been at odds with Comcast and Time Warner over their decisions not to carry the NFL Network. In House testimony delivered Wednesday morning, Goodell accused the two TV giants of discriminating against the NFL Network while faulting the FCC for not patrolling program carriage laws designed to protect independent channels. See Link Here.
Goodell appeared 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.
Birtt has certainly put his foot down -- and rightfully so. 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."
Time Warner does not carry the NFL Network at all, while Comcast puts it on a sports tier.
What Goodell doesn't say in his testimony is that the NFL Network only aired EIGHT regular-season prime time games last season.
Why should we be forced to foot the bill for a station that barely shows any games anyway? Isn't that the purpose of purchasing the NFL Network? If I wanted to see the AFC championship game from 1988, I would buy a DVD of it or wait until it aired on ESPN Classic -- a network that is already part of most cable packages.
Goodell calls refusal to put his station on most TV packages discriminatory. I'd say Goodell's inability to pick up more than eight games in a season is far worse. Make your TV network so impressive, cable carriers will HAVE to pick it up because of such high demand. Just look at the model ESPN created.