Current Views On The Sports Broadcasting Act
In November 2006, former Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, (D-PA) proposed legislation to repeal the NFL's antitrust exemption under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961.
Specter's concern was based on the National Football League's NFL Network, which is available in a limited number of homes, as compared to the other broadcasters of the NFL. For the 2006-07 NFL season, each NFL team annually earned more than $120 million in shared TV money. The league's officials negotiated various deals with CBS, NBC, Fox, and Disney, and ended up with a six-year (later extended to eight), $24 billion broadcast and cable rights contract. The television deals end in 2013. Additionally, DirecTV paid $700 million every year through 2010 for its Sunday Ticket package. The NFL also decided to keep an eight-game Thursday-to-Saturday night package in-house, placing it on its NFL Network.
Both the Sunday Ticket and NFL Network became issues of concern to Specter, possibly because DirecTV rival Comcast is headquartered in Pennsylvania. Comcast's Versus network attempted to bid for the eight-game package the NFL gave to their own network, but lost.
The NFL Network still has not reached agreements with Time Warner Cable and Cablevision to carry the league-owned network. League officials wanted an excessively high per-subscriber fee for the network in relation to its programming, according to Time Warner executives. Meanwhile, Cablevision chairman Charles Dolan has said nothing publicly about his negotiations with the NFL.
The NFL Network's high per-subscriber fees charged to the cable companies force cable firms to offer the channel as a premium-tier network. This, according to the NFL, is unacceptable, and they demanded their channel be placed on a basic tier, as compared to the higher-priced sports tiers. By doing so, cable companies would have to reduce the number of basic channels or increase the basic cable package rate to comply with the NFL's request. NFL rules however, require that NFL games shown on cable channels (including the NFL Network), be shown on a broadcast television station in the markets of the participating teams (subject to blackouts when necessary).
The other major concern is the lack of availability of NFL Sunday Ticket, restricting it severely through its exclusivity with DirecTV. A similar situation happens with NASCAR HotPass, which moved from the cable companies to DirecTV in 2007, and thwarted by Major League Baseball's MLB Extra Innings, which MLB attempted to push to DirecTV exclusively starting in 2009, but was stopped by threats from legislators.
In what may have been a goodwill gesture to Senator Lautenberg of New Jersey and, in an effort to sway Specter, the NFL gave Time Warner and Cablevision subscribers a free week of programming between December 24 and December 30, 2006. The timing allowed subscribers to tune into the Rutgers–Kansas State Texas Bowl matchup and another college bowl game featuring Minnesota and Texas Tech. Lautenberg had complained that many Rutgers fans in New Jersey were being unfairly denied the opportunity to watch Rutgers in the Texas Bowl because the NFL Network, which has rights to the game, had not yet reached deals with Cablevision and Time Warner Cable.
Read more about this topic: Sports Broadcasting Act Of 1961
Famous quotes containing the words current views, current, views, sports, broadcasting and/or act:
“What in fact have I achieved, however much it may seem? Bits and pieces ... trivialities. But here they won’t tolerate anything else, or anything more. If I wanted to take one step in advance of the current views and opinions of the day, that would put paid to any power I have. Do you know what we are ... those of us who count as pillars of society? We are society’s tools, neither more nor less.”
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)
“The current of our thoughts made as sudden bends as the river, which was continually opening new prospects to the east or south, but we are aware that rivers flow most rapidly and shallowest at these points.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Views of women, on one side, as inwardly directed toward home and family and notions of men, on the other, as outwardly striving toward fame and fortune have resounded throughout literature and in the texts of history, biology, and psychology until they seem uncontestable. Such dichotomous views defy the complexities of individuals and stifle the potential for people to reveal different dimensions of themselves in various settings.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)
“Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behaviour, attire, grace, learning and all their words aimeth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“We spend all day broadcasting on the radio and TV telling people back home what’s happening here. And we learn what’s happening here by spending all day monitoring the radio and TV broadcasts from back home.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“You should try to understand every thing you see and hear; to act and judge for yourselves; to remember you each have a soul of your own to account for; M a mind of your own to improve. When you once get these ideas fixed, and learn to act upon them, no man or set of men, no laws, customs, or combinations of them can seriously oppress you.”
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)