NY area Fans STILL Getting Squeezed By NFL network

NY area Fans STILL Getting Squeezed By NFL network-from today's NY times sports section.

By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: December 13, 2006
The NFL Network has offered Time Warner and Cablevision an opportunity for their New York-New Jersey subscribers to see Rutgers play Kansas State in the Texas Bowl on Dec. 28 if they accept the network’s weeklong free preview.

Yesterday, Time Warner and Cablevision — with about 4.5 million customers in the local market — did not show enthusiasm for the offer. Cablevision’s response showed that it did not want to give the channel much exposure.

Cablevision said it expected to carry only the pregame programming before the Texas Bowl, the game and any postgame coverage, not the full week from Dec. 24 to Dec. 30. It would be available to Cablevision’s Family Cable customers on Channel 14.

In doing so, Cablevision would eliminate the NFL Network’s hope of showing the breadth of its programming to customers who had not seen it and might demand it from Time Warner and Cablevision.

Maureen Huff, a Time Warner spokeswoman, said, “We just received the proposal and are looking at it.” She declined to say whether Time Warner was considering the same limited response as Cablevision.

League spokesmen refused to comment on whether Cablevision’s response violated the terms of the weeklong offer. “We will review their full response,” said Joe Browne, a spokesman.

Time Warner and Cablevision have refused to carry the NFL Network, at a monthly subscriber fee of 70 cents, on a broadly available tier like expanded basic.

The free preview, a common marketing tool in cable, especially for movie channels, was offered by Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the National Football League, during a telephone conversation yesterday with Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey. The league has received several hundred phone calls from fans who want to see the Rutgers-Kansas State bowl game.

Lautenberg has been lobbying the league to broaden the coverage of the Texas Bowl ever since it appeared possible that Rutgers would play in it. “The bottom line is that people in New Jersey need to be able to watch Rutgers play, and now we have a way to do that,” Lautenberg said in a statement.

The league chose to provide the free preview rather than license the game to local broadcast stations in the New York-New Jersey or Manhattan, Kan., areas, or stream it to broadband Internet users on NFL.com.

And my Take: This is just another slap in the face by The NFL network to it's NY area fans. People who don't want to pay for the Poor service of Dish Network or to Give Verizon anymore money. Some of us really want this Coverage, but we are happy That CABLEvision and Time Warner are standing up for us customers. It would be nice to have the free Preview though.