[CBFF] Article: NFL and Direct TV

[Phil DeNomme]

It would be nice to have options though.

-----Original Message-----
From: cbff-bounces at chicagobearsfanforum.com
[mailto:cbff-bounces at chicagobearsfanforum.com] On Behalf Of Kenny Claxton
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 5:27 PM
To: post at chicagobearsfanforum.com
Subject: Re: [CBFF] Article: NFL and Direct TV

Sounds like a bitter cable guy.

On 8/22/06, Steve Behrens <steve.behrens at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just stumbled upon this article, even though it was written before 
> week 15 of last years game, I thought it was a good read concerning 
> the NFL and their deal with Direct TV.  The full article (with some 
> other observation, picks, etc, can be found here:
> http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/12/29/232113.php
>
>
>
>  [image: Blogcritics.org] <http://blogcritics.org/>
>
>
>
>
>
> I am sick: head congestion, sore throat, cough. The symptoms roughly 
> correspond to a cold, but I am convinced it's something worse. Like 
> pneumonia. Or Bird Flu. Hell, maybe it's a tumor. Whatever the case, 
> I'm pretty sure I'm at death's door. Lucky I have made my mark on this 
> world through my legacy of football picks.
>
> At least if I reach Heaven I can count on having NFL Sunday Ticket, or 
> maybe I can just look down and see any game I want and even fly down 
> for a close up view of the line play once I get my wings. On the other 
> hand, if I wind up Down Below, my guess is the football viewing is 
> pretty close to what I have now: the only sure thing is that the Lions
game will be on.
>
> Actually, in Hell, all games are Lions games.
>
> But seriously, we live in an on-demand age. I can listen to any music 
> I want, at any time I want, and have the choice of buying or renting 
> it. I can time-shift movies and TV or simply order them when I'm ready to
watch.
> Anything that isn't already on-demand is moving in that direction. How 
> long do you think it will be until I can get my Rhapsody playlist 
> streamed to my car? Or how about the entire inventory of Blockbuster 
> ready to order through my digital cable box?
>
> So then why is it that I can only get a predetermined set of football 
> games, theoretically tailored to my geographical market by some NFL
bureaucrat?
> Instead of getting what I want, I get what some suit's idea of what a 
> typical person who lives within a couple hundred miles of me might 
> want to see on average. Did we take the time tunnel back to the Stone Age?
>
> For those not familiar with NFL Sunday Ticket, it is an extra cost 
> package that gives you access to any the game you want (with a minor 
> exception now and then). That's a pretty simple model. Pay roughly 
> $250 up front and you're covered for the whole season. There are even 
> optional add-ons like Short Cuts, a replay of an entire game with 
> nothing but the plays, everything else is edited out. You can watch an
entire game in 30 minutes.
> Cool, eh? All in all, it's a nice package; I would buy it every year 
> without a second thought. The problem is, it is only available with 
> DirecTV. That's right, no cable TV customer can have access to this; 
> it is for DirecTV subscribers only.
>
> As much as I love watching football, I am not giving up my digital 
> cable for it. So that means, if I wanted to see all the NFL games, I 
> would have to have DirecTV installed and pay the Direct TV 
> subscription of roughly $60/month plus the $250 for Sunday Ticket. 
> Suppose I could arrange to do it for only five months out of the year 
> for football season, that still jacks up the price of seeing the football
games I want to $550 per year.
>
> Yet even if I were willing to pay that, I still couldn't do it. 
> DirecTV requires a south facing line of sight for their little 
> satellite dish to work. Sorry, I don't have that. For me to get NFL 
> Sunday Ticket I would have to buy a new house, which jacks up the 
> expense a bit. But my personal issues aside, why would the NFL grant 
> this privilege to DirecTV, thus assuring it is only available to the 
> relatively small cross-section of insane football fans who are 
> financially willing and technically able to have DirecTV installed?
>
> The answer, as always, is money. DirecTV paid the Dr. Evil-worthy sum 
> of 3.5billion dollars to the NFL for this exclusivity. And the rights 
> are locked up through 2010. According to this 
> article<http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA480250.html>,
> cable TV negotiators were "blown away" by how much DirecTV was willing 
> to offer, but it's not all that shocking. NFL Sunday Ticket is the 
> only thing that matters to DirecTV. It is just about the only reason 
> to choose satellite over cable, especially now that cable companies 
> are offering discount packages that include broadband and phone 
> service. They really had no choice. If they lost Sunday Ticket, they 
> could just pack it in and call the bankruptcy lawyers. Note this quote
from a DirecTV exec:
>
> DirecTV will generate about $385 million in revenue this year from 
> Sunday Ticket, and revenue has grown 20% during the past two years... 
> If DirecTV grows its Sunday Ticket revenue each year by 11% to 12%, 
> the company will be able to break even on the rights deal...
>
> That doesn't sound all that promising for DirecTV. If all you have to 
> hang your hat on is Sunday Ticket and your target for Sunday Ticket is 
> to break even, well, that's not what I would call a robust business plan.
>
> The NFL does this because they believe that by limiting out-of-market 
> viewers to the niche audience of DirecTV, they can continue to extract 
> outrageous sums from the old-school networks for the market limited 
> offerings they currently provide. It's the best of all worlds for the NFL.
> DirecTV pays them an exorbitant amount for exclusive out-of-market 
> game rights, but the DirecTV audience is small enough that the 
> traditional networks (FOX, CBS, ESPN, etc.) don't freak out at the 
> competition and don't balk at paying an exorbitant amount for their 
> usual line-up of games. The League is swimming in green.
>
> The odd man out here is, of course, the football fan. You have to 
> shell out some healthy cash for the privilege of jumping through 
> DirecTV's hoops to see out-of-market games, or you live with what the 
> NFL thinks you should see. And it's going to be that way for the next 
> five years at least. In other words, it'll be 2011 before the NFL can 
> even consider stepping into the '90s. How lame is it that I can't just 
> contact Comcast and pay $5.99 or thereabouts to get the game I want to 
> see, like I can with most other sporting events? So much for the on-demand
world.
>
> Can you imagine a more lucrative business than the NFL? Internally it 
> is run like a totalitarian communist autocracy, but externally they 
> are savagely capitalist. Sort of like what would happen if Josef 
> Stalin mated with Ayn Rand. So many other businesses survive by their 
> connection to them that they pay ludicrous amounts of money for 
> sponsorship contracts just to stay solvent. And governments (read: 
> taxpayers) finance their major investments in fixed assets. It's good to
be king.
>
> Believe it or not, there was a time when things were worse for viewing 
> football games. At least we get Sunday and Monday night games. When I 
> was a mere lad, there were no prime time games. You got the Lions game 
> and one other in-division game on Sunday. Apart from that, you lived 
> with 30 seconds of highlight clips on your local news broadcast. It was
the dark ages.
> Didn't have none of your high-falutin' ESPN *Sportscenter* or your HBO 
> *Inside the NFL*.
>
> *Monday Night Football* opened a whole new world. I would wake up 
> Tuesday morning and be looking forward to Howard Cosell doing the 
> half-time highlights. I'm sure my Mom had to come in and turn off the 
> little black and white TV in my bedroom every Monday, because I 
> couldn't keep my eyes open past half-time.
>
> *MNF* didn't put prime time sports on the map; most localities 
> broadcast the local team's baseball games at night all summer long. 
> What it really showed was the viability of out-of-market games as 
> prime time programming. It could have been two lousy teams from the 
> west coast, but it was still the highest rated show in the Detroit 
> market. When *MNF* came along, we finally saw the marketability of the
game itself, rather than just the local team.
> Besides *Sunday
> Night Football*, *MNF* begat *Monday Night Baseball*, which begat TBS 
> and WGN cable casting Braves and Cubs games nationwide, which begat 
> any number of cable operators showing night baseball and NBA games. 
> Interesting that even though it started with the NFL, MLB and the NBA 
> are more flexible in their scheduling now.
>
> This Monday marked the last ever *Monday Night Football* broadcast on ABC.
> Next year it moves to ESPN (and ESPN's Sunday night game moves to 
> NBC), where presumably the excruciating crew of ESPN Sunday night 
> announcers will take over. Ironically, one of the legendary *MNF* 
> highlights is the gruesome scene of Lawrence Taylor breaking Joe 
> Theismann's leg. Now Joe gets to be the color man on Monday Night 
> Football. I wonder how many people will tell him to "break a leg" 
> before his first show. Let's hope NBC, which takes over Monday night's 
> game, will be able to do a quality job. They'll have Madden; if they 
> pair him with someone sharp (Costas maybe? You could add Jaworski for 
> even more insight...) and avoid Hank Williams Jr.-itis, they may do 
> well. Personally, I'd bet they do something stupid like hire Terrell 
> Owens when he gets suspended next time, or have William Hung do the
half-time soundtrack, or have Richard Lewis do color.
>
> By the way, I once saw Joe Theismann waiting for a plane at Dulles 
> airport in DC. He was wearing these obnoxious salmon colored Bermuda
shorts.
> Definitely not on his color chart. He dresses as obnoxiously as he 
> announces. He's not much bigger than me. I think I could've pantsed 
> him. I should have just on general principle. And maybe called out, 
> "LT says Hello," as I was running away. (Yes, I know it's apropos of 
> nothing, when you're lying in front of the TV hacking up chunks of 
> your internal organs, life's regrets are particularly vivid.)........
> _______________________________________________
> Check out the CBFF Blog:
> blog.chicagobearsfanforum.com
> CBFF Homepage:
> www.chicagobearsfanforum.com
>


--
"He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool
you. He really is an idiot."

 Groucho Marx

_______________________________________________
Check out the CBFF Blog:
blog.chicagobearsfanforum.com
CBFF Homepage:
www.chicagobearsfanforum.com