Speaking of football, what's up with comcast losing the NFL network? I heard May 1st it's not going to be available on comcast anymore.
Letter to the editor by John Gauder, Marketing Vice Pres of Comcast
In his April 7 Tennessee Voices article, NFL Network President Steve Bornstein argues that Comcast has decided to soon drop the NFL Network.
He's wrong about that; here are the facts. Comcast wants to carry NFL Network. We carry it today, and we've offered to continue to carry it under the same terms the NFL agreed to in a contract that the network signed with us.
The NFL has refused. Why? We're asking the same question. The NFL is the world's most lucrative, powerful sports enterprise. It makes more than $20 billion through long-term TV deals but wants more.
It's trying to leverage its enormous power by forcing millions of our customers to pay for games they previously saw for free. Comcast offers NFL Network on our sports entertainment tier. This is the fairest way to offer NFL Network's expensive programming: Viewers who want the network can see it. Viewers who don't are not forced to pay the NFL's high costs.
NFL Network provides only eight live regular-season games a year but charges consumers one of the highest fees of any national cable network. More than 99 percent of its programming hours don't even involve live regular-season NFL games.
Comcast is passionate about bringing our customers the best sports programming. We carry more than 250 NFL games across the country each season and offer thousands of other sporting events to our customers every year. We have reached hundreds of agreements with other networks, and we typically renew them without interruption.
We want to continue to carry NFL Network. We simply want to do so on terms that are fair to our customers — fans and non-fans alike. NFL, too, should put first the interest of its fans, and the general viewing public.
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