It should come as no surprise to anyone that many of the biggest cable operators in the country are once again going toe to toe with a major sports league and coming out on the bottom. Last year we had them nearly lose the right to broadcast baseball’s Extra Innings package, and now this year we have the same type of fight over the NFL Network.
Now, normally this might not be such a big deal. But what makes it newsworthy is the NFL’s shrewd move to start putting prime-time Thursday night games from now until the end of the season on the league’s own channel. That means that some fans who have cable, and whose cable company doesn’t offer the NFL Network, can’t watch the games.
Surprise, surprise, what’s been happening as a result? A mass migration from cable to satellite TV, since both Dish Network and Direct TV carry the network. I wrote a few days ago about how I simply didn’t understand cable’s stance over these issues. It’s so obvious that the satellite carriers really do bend over backwards to offer value, while cable just seems to be shooting itself in the foot over sports time and time again. We’ll see if this gets worked out the same way the Extra Innings fiasco did, but I doubt it this time.
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