See Post 15 above...
Posted on 01/28/2006 5:20:39 AM PST by abb
See Post 15 above...
Bummer dude. What a waste of precious resources.
Well, I am harvesting in other fields nowadays...
Around here, the NFL network is a premium channel. I would hope that local channels might be able to broadcast the Thursday and Saturday games -- indeed, for a game like, say, Houston vs. New Orleans, most of the viewers are likely to be in those two markets....I think so anyway...
This development may put the large market teams at a slight advantage. Obviously the New York Yankee local baseball TV contract is worth a whole lot more than say, the Milwaukee Brewer local TV contract. Thursday and Sunday, 2 games a week, 17 weeks a season...32 teams in the league...each team should appear about once. I would think if teams like the Chicago Bears appeared more frequently than that, surely one of the Chicago TV stations would try to acquire the games locally.
Back when I was in college, a friend pointed out that no one would watch the Cleveland Indians vs. the Seattle Mariners, but if the two worst teams in the NFL were on national TV, people would watch it.
The rules have changed since then, though -- Monday Night Football has gone from ABC to ESPN. Now ESPN is a basic cable channel, and most people have it. I'm not going to sign up for the NFL Network -- even if my favorite teams are playing on a given Thursday or Saturday night.
Actually it's because all the uniforms are ugly.
Depends on why it's warm.
Isn't HD TV broadcast?
"Any given Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday" doesn't have the same ring to it...
>>The league now is expected to ask cable operators to make the channel part of their basic services
The same thing happened in Boston where New England Sports
Network (Red Sox, Bruins) was $10/month extra. They made a deal to get on the expanded basic tier (for a slight increase in subscriber fees!) and now both teams are exclusively on
cable. Only time during reg. season that the Sox are on
free TV is when they have a Sat. afternoon game on Fox,
while the B's only hit "free TV" when there's a game on
ABC (they have hockey now, right, or am I thinking NBC...)
Anyway, NESN wound up with many more viewers _and_ it
was a prime prize for the eventual buyers of the Red
Sox. The channel is a license to print money, in some
ways...And NESN's website is tied into the Boston Globe,
aka the New York Times Jr. (The Times owns 17 per cent
of the 2004 World Champions).
http://www.boston.com/sports/nesn/
>>(for a slight increase in subscriber fees!)
i.e., instead of being $10 extra, it was included "free"
in expanded basic, only prices for that tier went up
$1.50 or something--whether you watch NESN or not you had to pay a lil' more.
I dont think broadcast television will go away....I think it will get better. With the digital signals, they can pack 5 channels where one now exists.
What is to prevent the NFL, or Nascar, in the future from including DTV rights in their future negotiations. Lets say NBC wants to get back in to the NFL, and bid on a package to show 2 NFL games at the same time. (NBC.1 and NBC.2) with them getting a certain number of commercial time to sell within the broadcast.
Cable is getting too expensive...our area just went to $70.00 for analog, extended basic service.
Not a bad idea. Note that games on the NFL Network are still broadcase in the teams' home markets. Here's what I think the NFL needs to do:
Continue with local broadcast games and a few nationally broadcast games.
Continue to offer season packages like DirecTV's Sunday Ticket.
Expand season packages to include packages for a specific team, division or conference.
Offer all of the games on pay-per-view.
That way, if you don't like your local team or don't want (or can't afford) a package like Sunday Ticket you can still get the games you want in smaller packages or a-la carte.
I agree with you about the NFL's restrictive broadcast rules. I live in a two-team market (N. Calif.), and we often get cut out of network double-headers, and are forced to settle for mediocre games. I haven't done it yet, but I keep thinking about Direct TV.
I'm also getting frustrated by the decline in quality, in my opinion, of the networks' NFL broadcasts. I think some of the announcers are terrible, and some of the directors make me dizzy. This is especially true with sports on FOX.
Last Fall, when I tried to enjoy the World Series on FOX, I got distracted by the constant replays and tight close-ups between every pitch. I wanted to see the game, including the defense, the wind-up, and the pitch. I don't really need to see the nose hairs on the pitcher's face.
FOX uses a similar style of directing for many NFL games. I want to see the formations, the seconds before the snap, and the snap. I quit counting the times I missed even the snap, because the FOX director held an unrelated close-up shot.
Then there is FOX's dependence on graphics to show us the game. They use a top graphic bar that is too low and partially covers the screen, sometimes add to that another graphic on the lower screen, and even occasionally put a smaller third graphic in the middle of the field. There was one time my screen looked like some kind of video game.
It's not just FOX that disappoints me. During an ESPN broadcast this year of a Steeler/Browns game, sideline commentator Suzie Kolber was talking about Trent Dilfer's indoctrination with his new team. She said Dilfer was told, no matter what else you do, you have to beat the Browns. No Suzie, Dilfer plays for the Browns; they want him to beat the STEELERS. Nobody on the set corrected her.
During the exciting finish of a Raiders/Chiefs game on CBS, the one where Dick Vermiel made the gutsy call to win the game on the last play, announcer Randy Cross was clueless. It never occurred to Cross that Vermiel was playing to win; Cross kept saying how the Chiefs only had time for one quick sideline pass, so they would still have time left for a field goal to tie, and repeated this until the snap, which resulted in a rushing touchdown to win the game. Nobody on the set seemed able to cut in and mention at least the possibility that the Chiefs were trying to win in regulation time. CBS missed the chance to focus on Vermiel's exciting gamble.
I realize that watching an NFL game on TV is a different experience than watching it live from the stands. But it doesn't have to be THAT different.
Perhaps I'm just getting old and crabby, but I miss the days of announcers like Ray Scott, and network directors that made sure the viewers usually saw the formations and snaps.
Any network that shows NFL films is a winner to me.
Drools in pleasure after looking at picture........ :)
And who do they want for their first game? America's Team, that's who. They will play the Washington Redskins at Texas Stadium Thanksgiving night. What a way to start your coverage.
Man, I loved that show.
"Broadcast" as defined as something sent out to a wide audience of disparate interests. This goes back to when there was only so much frequency spectrum. The networks tried to appeal to the wide audience. Hence, sports, comedy, drama, etc. The downside is that they had a near monopoly and their "newscasts" turned into opinion pieces sold as "news."
But once cable came along and now broadband web service, the constraints are no longer. Just as their "newscasts" are challenged, the need for their programming that appealed to the wide audience is no longer needed...
Oh. You didn't mean UHF...VHF...Thanks
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