Amid “Favrestock 2009,” a league source has reminded us that NFL owners will gather in Chicago on Wednesday for a half-day business meeting.
Per a league source with knowledge of the agenda (and our source isn’t one of our NBC Universal corporate overlords), owners possibly will vote on a proposal to extend the current broadcasting contract with NBC by two years.
Currently, the NBC deal for Sunday night football runs through 2011. An extension would take the current arrangement through 2013.
Earlier this year, the NFL extended contracts with CBS, FOX, and DirecTV through 2013. Those contracts were driven in part by the desire to make the RedZone channel available to cable customers, since the feature that previously was exclusive to DirecTV uses FOX and CBS footage of Sunday afternoon games — and potentially dilutes the total audience that each organization would otherwise enjoy.
ESPN’s contract for Monday Night Football originally was an eight-year deal, running through 2013.
So now all television contracts will come up at the same time, potentially setting up a high-stakes game of musical chairs when the Sunday afternoon packages, the Sunday night package, and the Monday night package are available to the highest bidder.
Let the games begin!!!
Florio, so what happens to your site if there’s a strike? Will you be on strike watch or cover the CFL and UFL?
And I’d rather have them hammer out a new CBA than announce TV deals that mean nothing right now. Nothing to us fans, anyway.
I just think it is so stupid the NFL Sunday Ticket is not available for cable customers!?
That is something they should have made available for both, Dish Network, Comcast, Satellite providers alike. Some people have to get satellites because they stay so far away from cable lines.
I like NFL Network, but you can’t get all the games at the times they come on, you just get replays!?
GE —> NBC.
NBC —> Olberman/Florio, Nightly News, et al.
(which means, clearly, NBC —> Obama).
Obama —> all sorts of corporate perks/bail-outs/tax breaks for GE/NBC.
Thus the incestuous love-triangle of a corporate/political/financial corruption orgy continues.
Am I the only one frightened?
At least we still have football. For now.
But what does this have to do with Favre?
Florio, you’re in the first ESPN ombudsman column.
Any chance they could undo the ESPN deal? The game last night was completely unwatchable. Berman was great 10 years ago, but he needs to join Madden on the cruiser to retirement and the rest of the crew were as exciting as, well…watching preseason football. At least Emmit was good for a laugh once in a while. As for the game coverage, Gru-dog has apparently taken over the “Joey Sunshine” slot, Tirico was blatently rooting for the Giants and Jaws has completely gotten away from his strength: breaking down the plays.
What are the chances of one network plunking down a massive amount of money for exclusive rights to all the games? Wouldn’t that be something? Say CBS says in 2013, “Hey, NFL, I’ll give you $100 billion (insert Dr. Evil pinky) to broadcast ALL the games.” I imagine the NFL wouldn’t bite, but I would think it would be a winning situation for the network involved, obviously depending on the monetary amount. Whoever it was could squeeze out all competition for football viewership, while cornering the market on sponsorship deals. Of course, the fan would get screwed cause it would cut the number of games actually on TV on Sunday. They could come out with CBS2 and CBS3, though. Hmmm…forget I said any of this…I am going to call CBS to discuss this great venture.