Cable discriminates, NFL says
WASHINGTON — Cable television operators discriminate against the NFL even though professional football is the nation’s most popular spectator sport, the league’s commissioner told lawmakers Wednesday.
The league-owned NFL Network airs eight regular-season games each year. But they are not widely available to viewers because of a dispute between the league and the country’s two biggest cable companies, Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable.
Commissioner Roger Goodell said the companies “enjoy a high level of bottleneck power” and treat the NFL Network in a “sharply different and clearly less favorable” way when compared with networks they own a stake in.
Goodell asked members on the House Energy and Commerce’s telecommunications subcommittee to pressure the Federal Communications Commission to enforce a law that bars discrimination against unaffiliated networks.
But Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said Goodell’s claims of discrimination were “a little hard to swallow” considering the league’s own antitrust exemption. She said the dispute is really about money.
Glenn Britt, president and chief executive of Time Warner Cable, said the NFL’s position was “especially disingenuous” considering the league’s exclusive arrangement with DirecTV Inc. to air the “NFL Sunday Ticket” package of out-of-market games.
The trend of exclusivity has grown recently, said Democratic Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the subcommittee chairman and a Boston Red Sox fan. He noted that baseball’s “Extra Innings” package was scheduled at first to air exclusively on DirecTV but ultimately was made available on cable systems.
The FCC has a process for resolving disputes between cable operators and programmers. But owners of independent networks have said the process is not used enough and is ineffective.
At the heart of the NFL Network dispute is the league’s preference that the network be carried on basic cable levels. Time Warner has refused to carry the NFL Network channel unless the channel is part of a higher-priced package. Comcast carries the channel on a premium level.
As a result, fans are caught in the middle, said Consumer Federation of America research director Mark Cooper.
“The current system, where the cable operators and dominant sport programmers force consumers to pay ever-increasing prices for a restricted set of choices, is the worst possible for the consumers,” he said.
Cooper said a simple solution would give people the option of paying only for the channels they want. Such an “a la carte” concept is strongly opposed by programmers and system operators.