When Can I Get The Green Bay Packer Channel? » Brats & Beer

January 29, 2006
posted under: NFL Network, Time Warner Cable sucks

Much to no one’s surprise, the National Football League announced yesterday that they will televise eight regular season games in prime time on its own NFL Network next season. The games will be shown on Thursday and Saturday nights, starting with a Thanksgiving night contest. Four of the games are being pulled from Saturday games that would have been shown on CBS and Fox and four others from regular Sunday game slots. In making the announcement, the league says that the games will also be offered to local over-the-air stations in those markets.

Speaking as one who does not get (and doesn’t really want) DirecTV, I’m generally in favor of anything that gets more games out there on television. The problem here, of course, is that not everyone gets the NFL Network because some cable systems (such as Time Warner Cable) do not offer it. Hopefully, the addition of games will provide the necessary leverage to force TWC to add the channel to their line up, but so far the company has been pretty resistant to the league’s efforts. This is also the same company that took ABC off the air for a day or two because of some petty little spat, so I’m not shocked by anything TWC tries to pull.

But I am a little disappointed that the league seems to have abandoned the idea of distributing NFL games through pay-per-view or some other mechanism available to more people than satellite subscribers. I know they get billions from the broadcast networks and that limited availability is part of the equation, but it really seems like there is more money being left on the table here. I for one would be willing to pay a reasonable fee for more games, especially if I could choose the games, and I think there are tons of fans who would also pay for that kind of access to games outside their home market.