John Kerry (D-MA) is making repeated offers to help broker a deal between the National Football League’s NFL Network and certain large cable companies, including Comcast and Time Warner, to make sure fans nationwide (or at least region-wide) can have access to key match-ups. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) have joined the Capitol Hill chorus, and are threatening an investigation into the NFL’s antitrust exemption.
The problem is getting the NFL and the cable companies to agree on a carriage arrangement satisfactory to all parties. The losers are fans who missed a Thursday game between Green Bay and Dallas with widespread national interest, as well as last night’s match-up between New England and Pittsburgh. Such contests are shown over the air in local markets, but not in extended regional markets nor in other more distant ones.
"It will be a dark day for professional sports if the powers that be fail to make this game available to football fans across the country, let alone the local fan base which extends beyond the teams’ home cities," said Kerry. "The Patriots have the potential to make history later this month, but today only 40 percent of homes will be able to watch it happen. Today, money threatens to keep fans in the dark, and that’s a damn shame for a league that built an empire and a fan base on free access to games."
"It will be a dark day for professional sports if the powers that be fail to make this game available to football fans across the country, let alone the local fan base which extends beyond the teams’ home cities," said Kerry. "The Patriots have the potential to make history later this month, but today only 40 percent of homes will be able to watch it happen. Today, money threatens to keep fans in the dark, and that’s a damn shame for a league that built an empire and a fan base on free access to games."Leahy and Specter have said they’ll consider revoking the NFL’s antitrust exemption via legislation they could originate in their Senate Judiciary Committee, according to the Associated Press. AP notes that talks in Wisconsin are being held involving not only the NFL Network but the Big Ten Network as well.
RBR/TVBR observation: Is there a plank on the Bill of Rights that we missed? Does it say, "No person or entity shall abridge, interfere with, inhibit or otherwise prohibit the right of the citizens to see football games on TV" somewhere? What will we get next, "The Ashlee Simpson Truth-in-Performance Anti-Lip-Synching Act?" How about the "Alex Trebek We Have Free Speech in This Country and I Don’t Feel Like Putting It in the Form of a Question Act?" We’d like to be able to watch some of these games, too, sometimes, and if Kerry can broker a deal, fine. But is it really an appropriate topic for a Congressional investigation?
