Word: nfl
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...there really demand for that much baseball, especially at a time of year when most sports nuts are focused on college bowl games and the NFL playoffs? The nation's cable and satellite providers think so: the MLB Network will debut in over 50 million homes - the U.S. has around 115 million television households - making it the largest pay-TV launch in history. "This is the next step in the evolution of delivering baseball to our fans," says Bob DuPuy, Major League Baseball's president and chief operating officer...
...other league-owned and -operated sports channels still haven't hit baseball's numbers, and they've been around a lot longer. NBA TV, launched in 1999 but still relegated to the more expensive tier of sports cable channels, has only 15 million subscribers. The five-year-old NFL Network, which has waged mortal combat against cable operators for more favorable distribution terms, reaches just 42 million homes. The subscription revenues from the cable and satellite operators could keep the MLB Network buoyant in a tough advertising market. In fact, most analysts are bullish about the channel. "We expect them...
...just baseball's popularity that got it such good distribution right out of the batter's box; the league made a major sacrifice to get into those 50 million homes, realizing that if you can't beat the cable powers, you might as well join them. Unlike the NFL, baseball offered the pay-TV operators minority ownership of the network. Satellite provider DirecTV owns 16.5% of the MLB Network, while the three largest cable companies - Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications - together own another 16.5%. Major League Baseball owns the remaining two-thirds. "We watched the path that...
...Though other large operators, like Charter Communications and Cablevision, don't have a stake, they agreed to carry the channel after the big boys signed on. Thanks to baseball's rather inexpensive asking price, companies have been more willing to play ball with MLB. Baine says that while the NFL demanded an 85 cents-per-subscriber fee from operators to carry its network, baseball asked for a more reasonable 25 cents. The network will appear on the basic digital tier of every major provider except for the Dish Network. "No one is going to get 50 million homes...
...that spirit, here's one for the Lions' players. Where do you go in Detroit in case of a tornado? To Ford Field - they never get a touchdown there. Yeah, it's not really that funny, is it? When you can't win one single game in today's NFL, it doesn't really feel like a laughing matter...