Cowboys to Headline NFL Network’s Entry into Game Broadcasts
Posted: January 28, 2006 @ 12:52 am
Check your cable provider, ladies and gentlemen, and take good stock of your relatives’ cable providers. Otherwise, you may miss the Cowboys’ traditional Thanksgiving Day game this year.
The NFL will announce plans soon to move eight Saturday and Thursday games to its NFL Network this fall, according to the New York Times.
The inaugural game will be a Thanksgiving evening game between the Cowboys and Washington Redskins. The league had been working on a deal for these games with Comcast, a major cable provider, but abandoned those plans to go into the broadcast world on its own. The games will represent the first time the NFL has acted as a broadcast distributor of its games. It had been content to negotiate deals with major broadcast and cable networks for the rights to air contests.
The league hopes the switch will increase the reach of the NFL Network, currently seen in only 35 million households. The league has thus far been unable to reach distribution deals with cable giants Time Warner and Charter cable.
The NFL receives approximately $3.7 billion per year from the four major networks, ESPN and DirecTV. That translates into more than $100 million per team before a single ticket, concession or piece of merchandise is sold.
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8 Responses to “Cowboys to Headline NFL Network’s Entry into Game Broadcasts”
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Rafael,
As I said on a previous thread, they should telivize the combine and show highlights of some college’s Pro Day performances. I said last year ESPN did a bang up job on the draft. There was more “expert analysist” than highlights of the players that were being drafted. I’d much rather see some highlight reels and combine performances than listen to Sean Salsbury, Mel Hodge, and Torry Holt among others give their opinions about players they have seen just as much as us (I thought Kiper and Berman did nice work last year). … I did find last year in my own search for highlights of Ware and Spears, that Yahoo sports had a good 5-10 minute reel on all of the first round selections plus a good handful of other players.
I’ve subscribed to DirTV’s Sunday Ticket for several years now. I really only want to see the Cowboys games. It’s my hope that we will have the choice of subscibing by teams rather than the lone option of paying for the whole league.
The FCC is considering allowing cable providers to offer their services “a la carte” in the very near future. This would mean that the cable providers could still practice “bundling” of stations for different plans as they do today, but require that if a customer wants to pick and choose only a few select channels they want for a plan for a certain amount per channel per month they will be allowed to do so. NFL Channel is currently only a $5 upgrade on my Comcast system, so I guess I will have to bite the bullet and get it now.
Major Suckage!
I’m in Austin and I’ve been calling TWC since last season to get the NFL Network on board. I was told by one rep that they have little to no interest in it.
If I miss a Thanksgiving Day game with the Skins cause of TWC I will be a bit miffed to say the least.
Poke
It seems that many mock drafts/opinions I read have The Boys taking an OLB, Saftey, QB, NT, or OT in the early rounds of the 06 draft.It seems to me that Big Bill built a young defense in his mold that will soon become a monster in the NFL. Would it not make more sense to address the missing links through FA with the likes of a Juian Peterson, C. Chavous, and of course a vet place kicker. That should still leave us enough cap space to add a desperatly needed playmaker on offense(take a stab at TO or probably more sensably Eric Moulds).With those types of additions the D would sooner rather than later become a beast for years to follow. That being said The Tuna now needs to do the same for the O. I think in the draft we should go with O line, O line, O line and set a strong young base for the future. Just ask any Big D hater and they will tell you the only reason that we won 3 of 4 SBs was because of that mauling line that wore opposing defenses down to the point that they no longer had the will to play by the 4th quarter. Any numb skull Lions fan (sorry Barry)will tell you that the reason poor little no talent Emmit Smith (sarcasm)was only the ALL TIME LEADING RUSHER was due to that great young line.If Coach Parcells does as fine of a job building this unit via the draft as he did the D line in 05 than it gives us one more year to look at the progress than Henson might make, evaluate P. Crayton and address QB of the future and WR corp of the future via the draft, FA, or both next season giving those youngsters a couple of years to learn from Bledsoe, Johnson, Glenn and of course Big Bill. It seems to me this is the way to win now and be set for many, many years. Please tell me what you think.
it would be so nice to be able to pay per view for $10 or so a game of any game you want to watch. i had direct tv but where i am it goes out often and not worth it. so i dont get any of that now which sux.
I think the NFL has to tread carefully here. I understand they own the games, but they have a near 50 year tradition of making the games easy to see. If large fan bases like Dallas’ and Washingtons’ can’t see a Thanksgiving Day game, the league will catch a LOT of grief.
It’s okay to leverage a provider like Time Warner, but they better hope the public doesn’t get caught in the middle.
Rafael,
The NFL is risking the wrath of two of the strongest fan bases in sports, not to mention, two of the most powerful owners.
This action may indeed force the major cable providers to offer NFL Network. However, there will be many fans who cannot or will not pay for the extra service. They will be left out, and their numbers will be considerable. Especially the millions of NFL fans who have no particular rooting interest in either team, but would normally watch it, only because it’s on.
One has to wonder if it will be worth it to gain the additional cable access for the NFL Network, yet, suffer one of the lowest TV ratings ever for a Thanksgiving game.