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The long drawn out disposition of former Adelphia customers in the wake of the Rigas family fraud indictment and subsequent corporate bankruptcy (2002 was quite a year) finally happened last week. It came on rather quickly for something which had dragged on so long I nearly forgot about it. The last time I'd talked to anyone about it was Summer of 2005 when I was trying to pump a Comcast engineer to find out how the division of spoils was shaping up.
In less than three weeks the situation went from complete silence to implementation. As of last Tuesday (August 1), we're Road Runners (or something). I may someday need to do a GTE Americast customer timeline (we've been passed around a wee bit) but I was off melting in Atlanta and would normally have had nothing to add.
Time Warner had other ideas.
They'd not carried the NFL Network at all before, having failed to reach an agreement on price. The obligations from deals struck by Adelphia provided a new twist. On day ONE of ownership, TWC lobbed the first round by turning off the network to 1.6 million households (Deadspin had a take we can endorse) and the FCC responded negatively. Probably because of this.
Concerned that Time Warner and Comcast would have more clout, the FCC included several conditions in its approval. The companies will be prohibited from trying to lure viewers by refusing to distribute their regional sports channels to rival providers such as satellite TV systems. In addition, independent programmers will have the right to binding arbitration if the cable systems decline to carry their channels.
By the time I arrived home on Friday afternoon, we had a new Time Warner Cable logo and NFL Network is there (I can't say if it left and came back). It may not be staying too long.
Because we still do not have a contract with the NFL Network, we have also begun the official 30 day-notification period with an on-screen crawl that began running last night at midnight alerting our customers that the network may be withdrawn again should we not be able to conclude an agreement with the NFL Network, Harrad said.
As pointed out elsewhere, this year there are real games being carried plus all the pre-season hoopla. Everyone is going to be a little prickly if this isn't sorted out come November.
Long term, this is about a lot more than NFL Net. The deal for broadcast rights to "Sunday Ticket" is going to open up in the next couple years and cable is going to play a big part (a dish or our wonderful trees? hmmmm) My best guess is that the NFL is resisting proposed pricing (especially unbundled price points) and language regarding distribution rights.
Baseball and Basketball both fell in line with 'game channels' even if it doesn't make too much sense; with longer seasons came more games, it works out reasonably well for all but the fan who wants to watch the hometown announcers call the remote game. Subdividing a regular season comprised of 16 games over 17 weeks is tough. I would love to have a single division package (at a significant discount of course) so I could watch all the NFC North games. Others might want anything from two to six divisions. Some will want to order the occasional game.
How that breaks down, what the league gets and what it costs customers are the league's likely talking points. What it costs Time Warner and what kind of breaks they get on licensing other media materials for use within other parts of the company is where things get interesting and TWX starts pushing it's weight around.
Time Warner just got a bit bigger and they've got some other properties (Sports Illustrated and HBO) where they hype the NFL with wild abandon. They won't settle for the deal Adelphia had and they're likely pushing for a better deal than Comcast, because of the exposure they can bring elsewhere. TWX isn't quite the size of Comcast as an operator, but they're not just another buyer. They're a seller and a reseller, which adds a whole new level of licensing hell and they use a lot of different media in ways that make them more like Disney, Viacom or FOX when it comes 'simple' broadcasting contracts. Who knows what kind of tangled web of agreements already exist? If they're looking long term, they're trying to negotiate a blanket contract that covers all known and new media types. Really nasty business there, a royal battle between kingdoms of minutiae.
The NFL isn't exactly undermanned in the legal department (except when it comes to Al Davis) and once again has anointed a lawyer with a PR background as the next commissioner. That's no accident.
There are no innocent parties here and perhaps we should just keep mum while the elephants wrestle as Tom Hoffarth originally suggested but he couldn't resist (and where did round 2 go?) Still, I'd like to know the details. Especially since the TWC marketing department has gone a bit overboard, their welcome advertisement is everywhere. At this point, the only people who don't know about the transition don't turn their televisions on.
Posted by Dave at August 11, 2006 10:05 AM