Time Warner & NFL Network
Last week, I joined a conference call in which Time Warner Cable had invited a number of bloggers to participate with their Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications Mark Harrad as well as Keith Cocozza, Senior Director of Corporate Communications. Basically, Time Warner was looking to educate bloggers in the football community about their side of the battle between the NFL Network and cable companies, (in this case, specifically Time Warner). Since Time Warner Cable operates around the country, and of course in the New York Metropolitan area, I thought that readers would be interested to hear some of what they had to say.
The call was short, and in retrospect, I wish that we bloggers had asked more questions and made more of a discussion out of it, but here are some points that TWC made in the call that I thought were interesting.
- The FCC is forcing TimeWarner to re-install the NFL Network in areas where they recently bought former Adelphia customers.
- TWC customers won't miss home team games (at least this season), all games are out of market games.
- 8 out of market games were available to their customers last year (ESPN, CBS, etc.)
- The NFL stripped out those 8 games, did not compensate providers for the disparity, and are now forcing cable providers to pay a rate hike at the same time on the NFL Network… in Seinfeld parlance, the NFL double dipped their chip.
- TWC has put together packages, like sports tiers, to provide sports programming to those that want it, and to not saddle non-fans with the costs of such channels, as sports programming generally the most expensive types of programming. Personally, I am still waiting on the ability to pick whatever channels I want… why the heck am I paying for Home & Garden Network? Boooo-ring!
- They are in negotiations with the NFL Network, and they want to come to an agreement, but it seems that the sports-tier piece is the sticking point.
- 350% increase in costs for 8 out of market games in an unproven network is unprecedented
- NBA TV, Fuel, Tennis Network, FoxSportsNet and others are part the targeted sports programming tier.
- You can check out www.nflgetreal.com for some more information.
What I was curious about, and wasn't mentioned was the past relationship with the NFL, and how they have snubbed land line carriers for NFL package, which is only available for DIRECTV customers. Every other major sports league seems to have their packages available on cable and the NFL refuses to, and then turns around and they blast the cable carriers with negative advertising. The interesting thing to me is that the NFL and Cable Companies are two entities that both are used to getting their way, so this could prove to be a pretty interesting staredown.
Note: We just noticed that MDS actually wrote an article in the Sun about this the other day. You can read it here.
