[CBFF] Article: NFL and Direct TV

[Jim Ferolie]

Not any apartment, though. And I kind of need to have the local cable access 
channel for my job. But this damn network doesn't even have NFL Network. 
Arrrggg.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ryan Dietzenbach" <ryandietzenbach at gmail.com>


>I think he's a little off.  I'm not a DirectTV guy (DISH subscriber
> here) but the dish services are generally no more expensive (if not
> cheaper) than digital cable.  Furthermore, they can mount it on
> basically any house or in a yard.
>
> Ryan
>
> On 8/22/06, Phil DeNomme <pdenomme at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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.)........
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > 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
>>
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