Cbs Tries To Get Back Into Nfl TV Picture

The temptation is to cease chronicling the National Football League television negotiations until the winners announce their deals and one network that bid the ranch loses because the other networks bid bigger ranches.

Mind you, it’s a temptation impossible to act on, for no subject on the business side of television sports boasts more endgame rumors than the NFL television talks.

One subject that ran rampant Monday was whether CBS brazenly opened its wallet to league officials during a meeting on Friday to show what it would pay to acquire what ABC or NBC have. All we know for sure is they met to discuss the parameters of the process. But did their chat become a mock auction? (And it’s “Monday Night Football” for $500 million, Mr. Tagliabue!) Not likely.

The real action won’t commence until CBS exhibits the full innards of its wallet. Its offer will set the floor, most likely, for NBC’s American Football Conference rights and ABC’s “Monday Night Football.”

And, yes, there’s more speculation. One, that Fox’s FX network is a big contestant for the Sunday night cable deal. That’s a silly notion, what with its 35 million subscribers being less than half of TNT’s or ESPN’s. If a Fox cable service entered the mix, it should be The Family Channel. But selling a package to TFC - which bestows “The Three Stooges” on us but no sports - would mean that a blowout bid from Rupert Murdoch means more than the powerful promotion and identification that TNT and ESPN have long provided.

Second, a Thursday night package for CBS. That’s been a ditsy idea for a long time. Not only would it place pro football against NBC’s blockbuster prime-time shows, thus risking low-rated games, it would shift games from other networks and add more advertising to the market. But worse, it would make all the networks happy, rather than keep one watching forlornly from the outside.

For a little wisdom, we usher in Fox’s John Madden. In 1993, he lost his job at CBS when CBS lost football then quickly regained it when Fox got the NFC rights and decided he was worth $8 million a year.

“In ‘93, I learned nothing is for sure,” Madden said from Sea Island, Ga., Monday. “I thought CBS was always in the NFL with the NFC and always would be. I was going to broadcast on CBS and nowhere else. Every time I heard a rumor that Fox would bid, my reaction was, ‘Yeah, but not us.”’

He added: “Looking back, I thought if anything would happen, I’d know it. But now I know, nobody knows what will happen. Anybody who says they know what will happen has to be guessing. There are too many ‘yeah, buts’ out there.”

Regarding his future employer, Madden was equally firm. Will he stay at Fox? “I don’t know that,” he said.

Will he join Al Michaels on “Monday Night Football,” where he nearly landed in 1993? “I don’t know,” he said.

Alas, nothing is certain save for the uncertainty. Sometime soon, maybe this week or later, NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS, ESPN, TNT (and who knows, maybe UPN and The Food Channel), will meet with the league, be asked which packages they want, and learn the cost. That’s when the real fun will begin.

You can be sure CBS has learned the errors of its ways; four years ago under the reign of the pinch-penny CBS chairman Larry Tisch, the network declined to make an offer for anything but the NFC package. Fox’s $395 million-a-year bid paralyzed, then sank CBS; CBS’ after-the-buzzer stab at trying to take the AFC from NBC was flagged for a flagrant delay of game.

When the new deals are signed, the next game will be how much of each network’s NFL contracts will be written off as losses. Fox wrote off $350 million in 1994, estimating that to be the difference between what it paid and the ad revenues the broadcasts would generate. Murdoch hardly cared. With prices for the new contract poised to explode through the retractable roof, losses should explode, too. Then maybe an advertising recession will hit. Football is a tough game.