Consumer Guide for Today's Media

By Jesse Temple

I hate it when this happens. You pull out your wallet schedule on a favorite sports team, looking for dates and times of contests later on in the season, only to find a big, capitalized TBA under time of game.

How can the schedule makers not be able to tell me when kickoff or tipoff is?

Most of the time, it's because they're at the mercy of the TV stations who own the rights to games and can pick and choose which are important and when to air them.

A quick rundown of the KU men's basketball schedule this season has four home games listed at 8 p.m., even though most home games tip off at 7. This is done entirely to accommodate the needs of ESPN, which will broadcast all four of those games in primetime. (By the way, the schedule tells me that all times are subject to change.)

Fortunately, one college athletics dispute has been settled WELL in advance. And this one has more to do with location than it does time of game.

According to the Waco Tribune, "Because of a dispute over television contract rights, the Baylor-Notre Dame football game scheduled for the 2012 season will be moved from the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington to the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans." Link found here

It turns out, ABC/ESPN and Fox Sports Network own the rights to ANY Big 12 game broadcast in the Big 12 geographical region. They paid $480 million for those rights, and they begin this fall. Just one problem: Notre Dame, deemed the home team for this game, has exclusive rights with NBC.

The athletic directors from both schools were forced to work out the kinks in order to satisfy the needs of mighty ESPN and mighty NBC. No Big 12 teams in Louisiana means all systems are go for the Superdome.

Thank goodness they got that cleared up now. I just hope NBC can agree on a kickoff time before I get my pocket Notre Dame schedule.

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.

By Jesse Temple

If some of us are willing to pay upwards of $50 a month just for ESPN, then the Big Ten Network sure offers a steal of a deal ... if you live in the eight-state Big Ten market.

The Big Ten Network "appears poised to land its most significant carriage deal to date, as top executives from Comcast Corp. and Fox have agreed on the framework of an agreement, according to sources from both sides," says an article found here.

The article reports that it's not known how much Comcast will pay for carriage, but BTN had been charging a little less than $1 per subscriber per month. A signed deal likely will occur within the next few months.

"The turnaround has been stunning," according to the article. "Just a month ago, Comcast insiders were pessimistic, saying that enough major hurdles remained that any deal appeared unlikely."

Comcast has about 5.8 million subscribers in the Big Ten footprint, including in Chicago and Detroit. Comcast also has clusters of subscribers in Minnesota and Pennsylvania, key parts of Big Ten country. BTN is now available in about 30 million homes through its deals with DirecTV, AT&T U-verse digital television and about 75 smaller cable operators.

In other words, this deal is huge for Big Ten sports fans. And as someone who once lived in Iowa City, Iowa but did not receive the Big Ten Network, I know how frustrating it is when a carrier in the Big Ten market does not air the games you feel you have a right to see.

But the BIGGEST point that needs addressing: I'm sure Big Ten fans are thrilled this deal is near completion after football and likely after basketball season is complete. The excitement of Iowa's rowing team going up against national powerhouse Penn State is riveting to the core.

Seriously though, I wonder what percentage of people buy the package solely for football and basketball. I can't imagine more than a few people purchasing it for any of the other sports the Big Ten has to offer. But I could be wrong.

By Jesse Temple

Well baseball fans, I thought it appropriate to post an entry today on this -- the OFFICIAL Opening Day of 2008.

And if you happen to be an Atlanta Braves fan, don't count on finding any Tomahawk Chops on your digital cable provider. Braves games on TBS have gone the way of the dodo bird, as our guest speaker last week would say.

The Braves were a staple of Ted Turner's "superstation" even in the early days of cable TV, dating all the way back to 1976. But now TBS has gone big-time, landing Sunday afternoon games of the week instead. Atlanta only will appear on TBS again if it happens to land on one of those 26 Sunday afternoon games during the regular season, or if the Braves make the first round of the MLB playoffs -- which TBS now has a monopoly on. Thirty-two years, and that's what the station trades it all in for? It somehow seems un-American for what once was deemed "America's Team."

So where in the heck can you go if you're a die-hard Braves fan? There are two answers. Unfortunately, the first requires living in the sun-baked south in the summertime, where 151 of Atlanta's 162 games will be aired. Those games will only be aired regionally, and they will appear on a bevy of different networks.

SportSouth (once known as Turner South), which carried 55 games last season, will jump to 81 games this season.

It was also announced on Friday that Atlantic Broadband will carry 45 Braves games previously believed to be unavailable to the company's customers.

Fox Sports Net South will continue its Wednesday night package of 25 games. And the former WTBS, the over-the-air local station in Atlanta, which has been rebranded WPCH (or Peachtree TV), is offering a 45-game package to distributors throughout the Southeast.

Peachtree TV. Are you kidding me? I sure hope WGN doesn't part ways with the Cubs and become Windy City TV.

Anyway, option No. 2 requires the Braves fan in you to ante up and pay for MLB TV. It will cost $89.95, but right now, it's the only game in town without TBS.

By Jesse Temple

We all saw this coming from a mile away. Or, perhaps I should say about 1,345miles away, where ESPN's hub resides. The question has been posed many times, but an answer my finally be on the horizon. Could ESPN be served on an a la carte basis to the channel's loyal fan base in lieu of other, less important cable channels?

FCC Chariman Kevin Martin hopes so. Just don't count on it coming anytime soon.

According to the Multichannel News Web site "Martin, who will probably leave office when President Bush concludes next January, is determined in his waning days to influence how cable operators and their program suppliers go about providing some 64.7 million homes with video channels dedicated to an assortment of news, sports and entertainment."

Martin has continually complained about the spike in cable rates. Earlier this month, he broached the subject of allowing cable channels to be purchased on an a la carte basis. The plan would allow cable operators to remove from expanded basic service, which is the most widely purchased cable programming tier, any channel that charges wholesale license-fee rates of 75 cents or more per subscriber, per month, according to the Web site.

Well, guess what? ESPN's current rate blows that total out of the water. The channel, owned by The Walt Disney Co., has for many years been basic cable’s most-expensive network. It currently costs $3.65 a month per subscriber to distribute, according to SNL Kagan research. Just three years ago, that fee was $2.96, according to SNL Kagan's research.

Martin hasn’t tried to impose a la carte at the retail level for the simple reason that the FCC does not have the legal authority to do so, which he readily admits. But Martin now says the agency could have power under a 1992 cable-program access law to impose wholesale a la carte requirements on the industry.

Martin doesn't agree with the way cable operators assemble channels in packages called tiers and offer them on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, as we have discussed in class. Consumers need more options, according to Martin, who favors a system in which consumers pick and choose almost every channel one at a time.

But of course, there are drawbacks. Of particular concern is the fact that ESPN's loyal customers likely would drop EVERY OTHER cable channel, pay exorbitant sums for ESPN, and leave cable providers scrambling to make money in some other way.

That topic has been discussed by cable providers all over the country, including good old Sunflower Broadband here in Lawrence. According to Patrick Knorr, CEO of the company, an a la carte model is risky because it is expensive to deploy the technology.

As for the ESPN problem...

“Packaging [ESPN] that way would not be a business decision I would make,” Knorr said, agreeing that the consumer flight from expanded basic was a real risk.

For this reason alone, don't count on ordering from that a la carte menu in the near future, sports fans. It would be too convenient for the cable subscriber to pick and choose what channels he or she wanted to pay for. Instead, be sure to check your bill for that tier you didn't want, which could include any of the following from Sunflower Broadband: Home & Gardening, the Hallmark Channel, C-SPAN and Country Music Channel.

I'll stick with my ESPN. I think I'd even pay a little extra just to take those other channels off.

By Jesse Temple

In the topsy-turvy, fight-for-the-biggest-dollar-sign world of sports carriage and TV rights, this one really takes the cake.

You've probably heard of the price gouging involved with airing the premiere sports networks on basic or expanded cable packages. ESPN, for example, charges more than three dollars for its total sports programming network. But at least the boys from Bristol are offered on those packages.

From the disastrous world of the NFL and its flagship station, cleverly coined the "NFL Network", comes a saga dripping with so many plot twists, it should be split into a five-part made-for-TV miniseries (aired on an expensive, tiered movie package, of course).

This story comes from the Cincinnati Enquirer. It appears a bit of a rift has surfaced with the NFL Network and Ohio's biggest cable provider, Time Warner Cable. When the Cincinnati Bengals face their biggest rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers, in a prime-time game on Nov. 20, the game likely won't appear on most fans' TV boxes.

That means thousands of fans won't get to watch the game if Time Warner Cable and the NFL Network don't end a long-running dispute over carriage of the channel before then.

According to the story, "Viewers in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky won't have a problem, because the game will be carried on over-the-air broadcast TV. But Bengals fans outside Cincinnati - in Dayton or Columbus, for example - won't see it if they are Time Warner subscribers."

The crux of the battle is this. The NFL Network wants the channel on a basic programming package, where it can be seen by most cable subscribers. That arrangement helps networks garner more advertising dollars, since advertisers pay higher rates for bigger audiences.

On the other side, Time Warner wants to put the channel on a sports tier, where it could charge subscribers an extra fee to watch it. The company's argument is that football is niche content and those who want to see it should pay extra.

Who is in the right? It actually sounds pretty reasonable to this average viewer to just put the channel on basic cable. The whole concept of charging for niche content to begin with seems absurd. There is plenty of "niche" content on regular cable, and customers aren't paying out the wazoo for it. Why the NFL, then?

Of course, if paying for an extra tier on Time Warner was the only option, I'm inclined to believe that many people would pony up, anyway. JUST OFFER IT to the darn viewers in some capacity. The root of the feud is money. And viewers are the ones who suffer.

The NFL Network has a history of alienating local football fans. Just more than two years ago, the same situation occurred between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Denver Broncos, who met for a Thanksgiving night game -- produced, directed and aired exclusively by the NFL Network.

While the NFL Network allowed Denver's Fox affiliate to air the game, viewers out of range were out of luck. People in Colorado Springs or Pueblo needed their radio sets to tune in.

According to the Denver Post article, the NFL Network has "been criticized for trying to strong-arm cable TV companies into carrying its product at an exorbitant rate. It's been scolded for blacking out loyal fans who can't get the proper cable connections. It's even been called in front of a U.S. Senate committee to explain its future intentions and answer questions about antitrust laws."

In Time Warner's case, the company has said it would have to pay $140 million a year to provide the channel to all 13.5 million of its subscribers in 33 states. The cable giant's stance is that the NFL Network belongs on a sports tier, where true NFL fans will pay for it.

Looks like some loyal Bengals fans in Ohio better get ready to shell out some dollars for a bucket of beer at their local bar, where the game would be offered on satellite.