Effective May 1, Comcast subscribers will no longer receive the NFL Network. While this might not be a big deal in May, just wait until the NFL season begins next fall with a regular schedule of Thursday night football games in early November and Saturday night games after the college season is over. This is the same Comcast that does not offer EPSN-U, the ESPN network dedicated to college sports or ESPN-360 that provides a variety of streaming videos some of live sporting events on its broadband Internet service.
Comcast has offered NFL Network as part of a premium add-on service consisting of EPSN News, Classic ESPN, Fox College Sports networks, NBA network and a couple other sports networks. The NFL Network maintains is programing deserves to be shown as part of the cable network's basic service, that the quality of its programming and viewer interest is sufficient that it should be made available to all cable subscribers. The result of this dispute, no NFL network for subscribers including much of the Mid-Atlantic (much of the Baltimore-Washington area and south central Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Chicago, and also much of California, Michigan and other states. Where competitive services are not available only Direct TV serves as an option, an impractical or prohibited solution where installing an external "dish' is not practical.
Though cable service is primarily an entertainment proposition, cable franchises are granted to serve to public interest by local governments which stipulate certain provisions for proprietary rights to provide service giving them a virtual monopoly in most instances. While some companies have been customer friendly and responsible others have been the personification of corporate arrogance. Time-Warner Cable, for instance, which serves much of central North Carolina refuses to carry MASN (Mid-Atlantic Sports Network) despite MASN carries coverage for many colleges in the region and the area is part of the media territory established for both the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals. This dispute has played out in court for three years.
Given the examples of Comcast taking on football fans and Time-Warner shunning sports fans in central North Carolina, one has to wonder if these industry giants might be letting their short-sighted anti-customer thinking might turn them into the next commercial dinosaur as satellite services like Direct TV offer more options catering to customer interests and competition like Verizon FIOS takes hold. While networks like NFL Network, MASN, and the additional ESPN networks do charge cable operators to provide their programming, cable operators have breaks for local advertising that should easily off-set the costs given the loyalty of sports viewers and the advertisers who target them as customers.
Surely, there is blame to be shared by both Comcast and the NFL who are lying in their public relations statements on the subject; Comcast arguing they're interested in keeping the cost of cable subscriptions down and the NFL arguing that they're looking out for customers who shouldn't have to pay an additional premium to view their programs. We are not interested in supporting winners and losers in these corporate struggles when the real loser is the customer, the dedicated sports fans. The bottom line is Comcast is too greedy to support the millions of football fans stuck with their service.
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