NFL labor talks: Understanding the negotiations
MONDAY, 07 MARCH 2011 14:19

BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/nfl-labor-talks-understanding-the-negotiations
As the representatives from the National Football League ownership group and the National Football League Players Association continue to try and bridge their differences and sign a new collective bargaining agreement (and yes Green Bay Packers players have collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin despite the best efforts of the state's governor to bust public employee unions as Governor Scott Walker told the fake David Koch), it might be useful to review 60 years of television money and players association activity and how closely linked television and the players really are.
NFL owners were planning to use some $ 4 billion in 2011 television rights fees to underwrite a lockout. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (FOX), General Election (now Comcast)'s NBC, Summer Redstone's CBS, the Walt Disney Company's ESPN and DirecTV cozied up to the NFL owners because the owners' product is still a consistently watched fare in an increasing fragmented audience industry — TV.
Television is the “tiger blood” of the NFL. CBS, NBC and ABC were the “Goddesses” that brought the NFL to the masses during an explosive growth spurt between 1960 and 1970. Each one of the NFL owners was a “bi-winner.”
NFL owners and NFL players have been battling over issues since 1956. Today, NFL players get huge salaries but have short careers and unlike their counterparts in Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League, a NFL players contract is not guaranteed. If a player gets fired, he keeps bonus money but he is terminated with just some severance pay. NFL players need four years to get a pension and five years of medical benefits following a career. The lack of will to fight the owners and just take money now has left some former players financially destitute and in some case contemplating suicide from injuries suffered on the field from Pop Warner through junior high school, high school, college and pro football.
As television contracts got bigger and bigger, so did players salaries but NFLPA negotiators never looked at the future.
“Money Now.”
In 1950, the three most popular sports in the United States were baseball, boxing and horse racing. National Football league owners were running mom and pop store operations that operated from July to December. Television, as the noted writer Frank Deford explained on a long forgotten TV show that featured this writer and Al Michaels (along with the "Scud Stud" Arthur Kent) on Histories Mysteries, an all inconclusive look at sports history in about 88 minutes on the History Channel in 2000, changed the sports world. By 1965, football was the most popular sport in the United States. The owners had more money than they ever could imagine but the owners still treated players like they did in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
The NFL owners and players had a contentious relationship for decades. The NFLPA formed in 1956 with help from Creighton Miller, the first General Manager of the Cleveland Browns. Unhappy players in Cleveland and Green Bay assembled a network of "player reps" on each team. The players included Don Shula (Colts), Frank Gifford (Giants), and Norm Van Brocklin (Rams) to represent their teams. The Chicago Bears did not have a players representative. The players first meeting was held in New York in the fall of 1956, after the owners ignored the players' attempts to discuss their requests. The players asked for minimum salaries of $5,000 per season, injury pay, uniform per diems, and for teams to supply their own equipment.
Nothing happened but the players got a big break in 1957 when, the first lawsuit involving professional football and antitrust was filed, Radovich v. NFL, which significantly altered player rights within the league. The case involved a player/coach, George Radovich, who sued the league because the NFL effectively prevented him from attaining employment in the NFL or affiliated leagues, such as the Pacific Coast League, which was in existence at the time. The case was dismissed on the grounds that the NFL was exempted from the antitrust laws, and was appealed to the Supreme Court, which reversed the decision of the trial court, holding professional football subject to the antitrust laws.
The Supreme Court of the United States decision changed life for NFL owners. The players could now sue the league on antitrust grounds which they threatened to do. The owners and players settled with the players receiving minimum salaries of $5,000, $50 payment for preseason games, medical coverage for injuries, and a pension.
But the players didn't get what they agreed to and spend the 1958 season chasing the owners to live up to the agreement. The deal was finally signed in 1959.
In 2011, as a fallback, the players will decertify their association and then sue the league on antitrust grounds if an agreement isn't reached soon. Nothing much has changed since 1957.
The truth was that football was a part time vocation and not a real job for either the owners of the players in the 1950s.
When the season ended in the 1950s, so did football as a main vocation. New York fans may have wildly cheered the New York Giants defensive lineman Andy Robustelli on six Sundays a season, but on the Monday after the final game, it was back to work in the civilian world.
"Each player the day that the season was over, you were free and you looked for a job. You wouldn't see each other until next year. I think, and with all respect to the modern ballplayer, I hope the modern ballplayer appreciates, not only the opportunity, but...football is a stepping stone it's not the end of life," said Robustelli , who became a successful businessman in Connecticut once his Giant days were through, in the 1990s.

Robustelli's generation of players didn't put up much of a fight with the owners for pensions and future health benefits. In fact, lots of generations of NFL players never put up much of a fight for pension and health benefits and according to one players agent, there was a reason for that.
"Their constituency is active players and when the crunch comes, no one with status is representing the retired players. So it relies on the good will of the current players, which has been subsumed to selfishness," said the agent. "Football players are the worst labor unit--short playing careers, spectre of injury, coaches kids, born-again Christians, all salary paid from September to January so each game check more impactful, (Joe) Montana and Howie Long and other stars crossed picket line last time (in 1987), no ability to sustain a strike."
The NFLPA has always been weak and the owners knew that. The two leagues may have merged, but the player associations did not, as the players on the 16 NFL teams were NFLPA members and the players on the 10 AFL teams were American Football League Players Association members. This caused a major problem in subsequent negotiations as the NFLPA would come to a tentative agreement with the owners on certain collective bargaining issues (such as minimum salaries, retirement age) then the owners would bargain with the AFLPA, who accepted lower terms, which wasn't good for NFLPA members.
There was a brief lockout and a 20-day strike in 1970 that ended just before the 1970 All Star game and which did not result in the cancellation of regular or post-season games, the NFL and NFLPA signed a four-year contract, the first collective bargaining agreement in the history of the NFL, which raised player salary minimums to $12,500 for rookies and $13,000 for veterans, added dental insurance, improved the pension, gave players the right to have agents, gave players representation on the Retirement Board, and provided for impartial arbitration of injury grievances.
(Retired players from that era are still battling the NFL over injury grievances)
In 1974, the previous CBA was coming to an end. Players were demanding the elimination of the Rozelle Rule and the option clause which kept a player tied to his team in perpetuity unless another team was willing to give up number one draft picks or players to sign a free agent among other things. On July 1, the players went on strike, and were prepared to sit out until a new bargaining agreement was hammered out. The sit-out led to the cancellation of the New York Jets game at New Haven, the first game ever canceled due to a labor impasse. However, by the early part of August, about a quarter of the NFLPA crossed the picket lines, breaking down union solidarity. On August 11, Garvey sent his players back to work after a federal mediator suggested a 14-day cooling off period, instead pursuing the issue through the Mackey case. The 42-day strike ended that day with nothing gained.
On September 21, 1982, NFL players went on strike. It was the longest strike in professional sports in the U.S. at the time and lasted until November 17. The owners responded by locking the players out at the commencement of the strike. During the strike, only 126 of the 224 scheduled regular-season games were played, forcing the league to change the format of post-season play to include 16 teams instead of the usual 10 teams. The players held two "All-Star" games to raise some funding for players without a paycheck. The players got more money but two goals were not met, a form of free agency and more pension money.
NFL owners won the 1987 battle with the players but the two sides ended up in Judge David Doty's courtroom in 1993 after the association decertified. They came up with a deal because of pressure from Judge Doty. Eighteen years later, Judge Doty is still involved with the two sides. Apparently Judge Doty disagrees with the owners pocketing network, cable and satellite TV money in 2011 whether the league is locked out or not. There is a question of what happens with that $4 billion. Eventually Judge Doty will decide what to do.
Television and the NFL have had a long history. TV has helped and hurt the league. Today, it is all good but 62 years ago, it was a different story.
The Los Angeles Rams showed all 12 of the team's home and away games on local television in 1949 and saw a sharp decrease in attendance from 1948. In 1950, NFL Commissioner Bert Bell urged teams to blackout home games in an effort to keep the people in the stands for home games instead of in front of the television.
Some teams had TV contracts. The Dumont TV Network paid $75,000 to nationally televise the Los Angeles Rams-Cleveland Browns championship game on December 23, 1951. By 1953, the NFL was in the courtroom defending its blackout policy. Judge Allan K. Grim of the U. S. District Court in Philadelphia upheld the league's blackout policy and did not violate anti-trust laws.
The 1957 NFL Championship Game was blacked out in the host city, Detroit, despite being a sellout. The blackout policy was challenged again in 1962 when the Giants hosted Green Bay in the NFL Championship at Yankee Stadium Judge Edward Weinfeld of the U. S. District Court upheld the NFL position and denied an injunction, which would have forced CBS to televise the game in the New York City area.
“That was a big test case for us,” said Mara of the 1953 courtroom proceedings. “I think the big value of TV was the promotion that it should what a great event this was; what a great game this was. It made people want to come to the ball park, or go up to Stratford, Connecticut to see it on TV.”
New York Giant fans who could not get tickets to the sold out Yankee Stadium would travel to Fairfield County, Connecticut and either rent hotel rooms or go to bars and/or restaurants to watch blacked out home games on WTIC, Channel 3 out of Hartford. Blacked out games meant money six, seven or eight times a year to Connecticut businesses.
The blackout policy would remain in effect until 1973, when Congress passed experimental legislation (only valid until 1976) requiring any NFL game that was declared a sellout 72 hours prior to kickoff be made available for local TV.
Television would play a role in the Bidwill family's move of their Cardinals franchise in 1960. The NFL also permitted the Cardinals to relocate to St. Louis for the 1960 season, in an effort to eliminate the market-cannibalization taking place between the Cardinals and the Bears in Chicago, the second largest television market at the time. The Chicago CBS station, which was televising NFL games, needed a solution to the Bears-Cardinals two-market setup. Since the teams never played on television head to head unless they played one another, and the league was blacking out home games, CBS never showed games in Chicago.
On March 13, 1960 the Cardinals moved to St. Louis after receiving $500,000 for "improvements" at Soldier Field, some of the funding coming from CBS. In effect, the Cardinals were not just "allowed" to move to St. Louis, but rather were paid to do so by the Bears, the NFL, and CBS.

The American Football League formed in 1959. It was an eight-team league, which borrowed a business model from the stillborn Continental Baseball League, which was a brainchild of Branch Rickey. The CBL planned to pool TV revenue and divide the money among the league's 12-teams. Rickey's league was working under the assumption that it had an antitrust exemption like the American League and National League in baseball. Lamar Hunt's league must have felt the same way. The AFL had decided on November 23, 1959 to approve a cooperative television plan whereby the league office negotiates the television contract and which proceeds from which were equally divided among member clubs.
By June 9, 1960, the AFL had a TV deal with the American Broadcasting Company. It was a five-year contract with the eight teams sharing $1,785,000 in 1960 and graduated increases of the life of the agreement.
The NFL wanted the same type of network deal but the league had to live with the Sherman Antitrust Act hanging over the league's business practices. That changed on September 30, 1961 with President John F. Kennedy's signature on a bill that allowed the 14-team league to become one entity for television contract negotiation purposes.
In 1960, the New York Giants received $340,000 for their deal, but the Green Bay Packers received $105,000. Rozelle saw the changing playing field and knew the big market teams in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles could get enormous contracts as television grew leaving behind smaller markets such as Pittsburgh and Green Bay.
"My brother Jack (Giants), George Halas (Bears) and Daniel Reeves (Rams), we were the three teams that were most affected," said Giants owner Wellington Mara. "Now, Art Modell (Browns), he had has own deal made already and he surrendered that to go into it.
"He (Modell) was really the one who gave something away. We didn't know what we were giving up. That is what did it. They made the decision. Without that, why we wouldn't have the league we have today."
Rozelle was a genius. He was lucky that the times were favorable but he had to work at getting a diverse group of owners to think league instead of individual fiefdom and he did.
"I think he explained to everybody very cogently what was at stake and he knew it wasn't going to be much of a league with lopsided revenue" Rozelle is a guiding force in the formation of the modern NFL. "We used to laugh a little bit, but we used to say Pete was so smooth and so polished and he had a great sense of public relations, but we always thought in running a league meeting, the softest part about him were his teeth," said Mara with a laugh.
"He knew when to twist an arm, and when to massage an ego and he made great use of that knowledge. He stepped in and from the very first minute, from the very first meeting he ran, he was a leader. He took things over and organized us."
CBS would win rights to NFL games in 1962 with a $4.65 million bid, NC would gain the 1963 AFL Championship Game for $926,000 despite the fact that ABC was the AFL regular season TV right’s holder. CBS would keep the NFL for the 1964 and 1965 seasons as well as the NFL Championship Game by paying $14.1 million per season and $3.6 million for two championship games. Meanwhile NBC guaranteed the future of the AFL by signing a five-year, $36 million contract beginning in 1965.
CBS extended its relationship with Pete Rozelle and the NFL in 1965 through 1967 with a $39.6 million for the 1966 and 1967 regular seasons with an option for 1968. CBS bought the 1966 and 1967 NFL Championship Games for $2 million per game. After the June 8, 1966 merger, the rights to the first four AFL-NFL Championship Games, 1967-70 was sold to both CBS and NBC for $9.5 million. In 1969, CBS passed on Rozelle’s idea of Monday Night Football, ABC acquired the rights to 13 games annually between 1970-72. Monday Night Football would change the NFL as much as the June 8, 1966 merger between the AFL and NFL.
The players of the 1960s kept pushing to get the owners to give them more benefits. They always seem to lose except salaries increased as TV contracts increased.
Television is willing to pay sports teams lavishly because TV executives think 18-49 year old males and 25-54 year old males will tune in and support advertisers’ products. The NFL makes TV networks. Monday Night Football made ABC a legitimate network in 1970. NFL ratings were down significantly in 1999, and 2000 yet CBS was happy with its decision to return to the NFL after one time owner Lawrence Tisch passed on extending the network's NFC deal with the league in 1993.
Tisch's failure to extend NFL football on CBS caused a massive turnover in the TV industry. CBS lost local affiliates in Detroit and Milwaukee as stations defected to FOX to continue having NFL games and FOX became a network sports powerhouse, eventually securing the rights to Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League.
While CBS claimed to have broken even on its football expenditure in 1998, insiders knew that other areas of the company were cut back because of football. The company announced massive layoffs in 1998 and closed studios around the United States.
After the NFL was lost in 1993, CBS still had its billion dollar, seven-year deal to cover the NCAA Tournament in basketball, golf's Masters and college football. Cutbacks at CBS were nothing new. Tisch scaled back the news operations in the 1980s to pay for football and baseball. In fact, Tisch really started the pay escalation for TV rights by paying the enormous sum of $1.06 billion over four years for MLB television rights from 1990-93. CBS ended up losing millions on the deal, especially with poor Saturday Game of the Week ratings.
Without the NFL and John Madden, Rupert Murdoch's United States media empire may not be as imposing as it is today.
Before the NFL and Madden, Murdoch's FOX network, which is technically not a network but a syndication unit, was a weak collection of UHF stations with the exception of a few cities like New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. Before the NFL and Madden, FOX had a few shows that drew some attention, the It's Gary Shandling's Show, the Tracy Ullman Show and Married With Children. Out of the Ullman show came The Simpsons, Shandling's show originally ran on Showtime and then went to FOX. Ullman's show was canceled in 1990. FOX could not establish a late night talk show, the Joan Rivers experiment was a disaster and a 1993 Chevy Chase late night show as a bomb. Not much worked for Murdoch.
Neither Al Bundy nor Bart Simpson, as popular as the characters would become, could bolster FOX. Murdoch's team was buying TV stations and became the biggest owner of over-the-air stations in the United States but by 1993, it was still the fourth network in a three horse race for ratings behind CBS, NBC and ABC.
The NFL and Madden changed all of that. Actually, it was Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys that put Murdoch on the map as Jones and Murdoch negotiated the TV deal that would change everything. The NFL had been prospering from TV rights fees since the 1961 Sports Broadcast Act which allowed the league commissioner, who is also the league's chief negotiator and lobbyist in all things NFL, to bundle the 14 member franchises into one entity in order to negotiate a TV deal. Three decades later, the NFL was a 30 franchise entity with four separate and distinct elements. CBS had the National Football Conference contests and paid slightly more money for the NFC than NBC did for American Football Conference games because the NFC had more major markets. ABC had Monday Night Football and ESPN and Turner Sports split a Sunday night package.
The NFL was being paid $3.6 million over a four year period between 1990 and 1993.
Murdoch's fourth place network was desperate for a game changer and the NFL provided him with an opening. The NFL and Jones were knocked over by Murdoch's bid for the NFC games. Murdoch was willing to fork over $1.58 billion over four years to get the NFC package along with the Super Bowl. Murdoch had a syndication arm but no news division, no sports division, none of the apparatus that CBS, ABC and NBC had. Murdoch knew that the NFL deals with an old philosophy, cash on the barrel head gets serious consideration and because he blew CBS out of the water with his bid, the NFL and Jones knew they would be getting a new partner with a patchwork of big city VHF and small area UHF stations and both sides would have to make it work.
In December 1993, The NFL took the money. In retrospect, it was the right decision but at the time it looked like just a money grab.
In early 1994, Murdoch started to prepare for the 1994 season by quickly established a sports department by giving Madden an enormous contact and hiring his sidekick Pat Summerall. Murdoch also took Madden's CBS support team and made John feel right at home. Madden would become the face of FOX sports and with the NFL in tow, Murdoch was able to steal VHF stations in Detroit and Milwaukee away from CBS. Murdoch had one of TV's crown jewels, the NFL, and FOX would now be in a position to become a serious player in American TV.
It can be suggested that the success of the NFL and Madden on FOX led to Murdoch to start the FOX News Channel. The over-the-air network, still technically a syndication arm, started producing hits like the X-Files along with Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, In Living Color to go along with The Simpsons and Married With Children. Murdoch didn't have blockbuster ratings but the network was doing okay business and he already had a satellite news network in Europe, Murdoch turned to creating a United States cable TV news channel.

There are no what if questions. The NFL and Madden changed the fortunes of both Murdoch and Lawrence Tisch's CBS. In 1993, CBS completed the TV hat trick; it won daytime, prime time and late night ratings. David Letterman had just moved over to the network and things were looking good. But Tisch's CBS did not invest in cable TV, lost the NFL and Madden, football's top star both on and off the field, lost affiliates and would start a downward spiral. Murdoch's FOX Sports added the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball soon after the NFL deal. Eventually Murdoch would gain NASCAR and the Bowl Championship Series. On the cable TV side, Murdoch sort of has a national sports network, but that is not where Murdoch really has a sports foothold. Murdoch's regional sports cable networks are still strong despite being challenged by upstarts in the past few years. FOX either owns or has agreements with 23 regionals and there are college sports networks as well. There is also a partnership with The Big Ten Network
Madden's signing with FOX after CBS lost the NFL rights in 1993 cannot be dismissed. John Madden was a major part of the FOX promotion, so much so that at an NFL owners meeting at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, John ended up by the master of ceremonies for the night's owners party after Murdoch departed. Madden left FOX after the February 2002 Super Bowl and joined ABC Monday Night Football's crew. John was no longer that valuable to Murdoch. Rupert built a viable network; he had built a strong regional sports cable network. He had his news channel and was finally an American citizen because non American citizens could not own TV networks. Murdoch, the Australian, should not have owned FOX but American President Bill Clinton's Federal Communication Commission in 1995 allowed Murdoch to run FOX because it was "in the best interest of the public."
NFL owners never knew what they had in the 1950s. Today billions flow into the owners pockets. The fight between the owners and players is all about money. It is “Money Now” for the players and the owners.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com

ESPN will get real competition from Comcast-NBC merger
Thursday, 20 January 2011 14:26

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/espn-will-get-real-competition-from-comcast-nbc-merger

BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
If you thought you heard a groan from the Walt Disney offices in Bristol, Conn., Manhattan and LA on Tuesday afternoon after the Federal Communications Commission approved the planned merger between the Philadelphia-based Comcast Corporation and NBCUniversal, you weren't imagining the sounds. The suits at Disney probably aren't too pleased with the FCC's decision to allow Comcast and General Electric's Peacock network and other holdings to go to the altar and be wed.

After all, Disney's cash cow, the so-called "World Wide Leader in Sports" will more than likely get real competition since the folding of CNN Sports Illustrated in May 2002. FOX Sports does program local regional cable sports networks but really has never been an outright competitor to ESPN. Neither CNNSI nor FOX successfully challenged ESPN SportsCenter but that could change as Comcast has the ability to put on a national cable TV sports show as they are doing that locally with some of the company owned regional sports cable TV networks.

Comcast, the largest multi-system operator in the country (with systems located in New Jersey) owns Versus, an all sports channel, the Golf Channel, a piece of the Major League Baseball and a boatload of regional sports networks around the United States, including SNY (a venture that includes Time Warner and New York Mets ownership in the partnership) and in Philadelphia. NBC has deals with the National Football League, the National Hockey League, Notre Dame football, and the 2012 Olympics among the network's sports properties. NBC has not had Major League baseball, the NBA or NASCAR in years. The network does have golf and tennis events.

Versus, or whatever the Comcast owned cable sports network will be called, could become a much bigger player in sports. Right now, Versus has the NHL, some cycling events, the United Football League (if that league makes it into a third season next fall) and some other events. Versus has not be able to get nearly 100 percent penetration onto cable TV's basic expanded tiers thorough the country as of yet.

But that could be changing.

More than likely, in the short term, there will be integration of Comcast sports programming with NBC's sport programming and some of that will end up on cable TV networks which including USA.

Comcast NBC may be too late to the table to bid on some events in the short term.

Disney is talking with the National Football League about extending ESPN's contract with the league for the Monday Night Football package which might bring as much as $2 billion annually to the NFL through 2022 or 2023. (NFL owners are complaining that they cannot afford to continue giving players 59 percent of the league's revenues because of tough economic times. If the reports that Disney is ready to pay billions — which would come out of cable TV subscriber's pockets whether they watch Monday Night Football or not and most of ESPN's potential audience does not watch the channel — it makes it hard to believe the NFL is in dire economic straits as a March 3, 2011 deadline looms as a possible lockout date if the owners and players do not agree to a new collective bargaining agreement.)

The Monday Night NFL package may be a done deal for Disney, but Comcast has NBC's Sunday Night NFL package through 2013 as part of the merger. NBCUniversal was cash strapped prior to the announcement that Comcast was buying 51 percent of the company. Sunday Night Football has been the top rated prime time series on over-the-air network TV in 2010. It stands to reason that Comcast-NBC will attempt to throw as much money as possible to the "cash-poor" NFL owners to keep the franchise.

The big prize, or the "perceived perception" big prize, in TV is the International Olympic Committee's pride and joy events — the Summer and Winter Olympics. NBC Universal has the rights to the 2012 London Games. The IOC, an entity which believes that it is an international entity with the power to dictate to countries policy and has permanent observer status at the United Nations, waited for the FCC to act before it opened up contract negotiations with American TV networks for the rights to the 2014 Sochi (Russia) Winter and the 2016 Rio (Brazil) Summer Games. The IOC can now go ahead and start a bidding war or what they hope is a bidding war between Brian Roberts's Comcast-NBC, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, Sumner Redstone's CBS (and possibly Redstone's NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament partner Turner Sports) and Disney for the rights to future Olympics.

NBC lost money on the 2008 Beijing Olympics and American networks, particularly in an economic recession and recovery might not want to spend every last Swiss franc to satisfy IOC President Jacques Rogge and his band of merry men for the big prize.

Future Olympics will be seen over a multitude of platforms including over the air TV, cable TV and broadband. All of the US bidders have the wherewithal to provide that type of coverage to the IOC.

Disney has the rights to the Bowl Championship Series through January 2014. Disney and Turner share NBA rights until 2016. MLB's TV deals with Rupert Murdoch's FOX, Time Warner and Disney's ESPN are done in 2013. ESPN's non-exclusive deal with Major League Soccer is done in 2014. The MLS is currently trying to negotiate a new deal with Murdoch's FOX Soccer Channel and is reportedly asking for a 700 percent increase in rights fees. Reportedly Murdoch's channel wants to just slightly more than double payments from $3 million annually to $7 million.

Cable TV sports networks negotiate with other people's money — subscriber fees — and the subscriber is at the mercy of the network or multiple systems operators. It is either all or nothing for basic expanded tier customers.

Comcast and NBC have National Hockey League national cable and over-the-air TV rights. Disney, according to reports, would like to get a piece of the NHL's cable TV deal. This could be the first bidding war between ESPN and Comcast. Comcast owns a team in the NHL, the Philadelphia Flyers. Comcast also has the cable TV rights of a number of NHL teams including the Flyers on Comcast Sports Net, Philadelphia.

There is also another aspect of this deal that could impact local news operations at various NBC owned and operated stations including those in New York and Philadelphia. SNY and Comcast Sports Net Philadelphia already have sports staffs and Comcast could decide to drop the local sports anchors on WNBC in New York and WCAU in Philadelphia to save money.

There was a report in 2010 that WPIX, Channel 11 in New York was considering outsourcing the station's local sportscast to the Comcast-owned SNY but that never materialized. Local news operations around the country have been marginalizing or dropping sports reports within the news show.


Critics of the merger contend Comcast will simply be too big, too controlling of content (critics have ignored how cable TV has been set up, this is nothing new) and that a multiple system operator cannot also be a programmer and that Comcast could muscle out competitors like ESPN by simply dropping the channels from Comcast systems. It is unlikely that Comcast would drop ESPN since the channel makes them money. But there will be disputes. Comcast and the NFL have been fighting over the NFL Network for years. Comcast might have played hardball with the NFL after the multi-systems operator thought it had a deal with the league for a small Thursday-Saturday night package for the Versus network. The NFL decided to keep the games in-house and put them on the NFL Network. After that, Comcast decided the NFL Network charged too much money for programming for their subscribers.

There will always be skirmishes between the multiple system operators and cable networks over money. That will not change with the Comcast-NBC merger.

The merger probably will not be in the best interests of consumers as rights fees, retransmission costs and other fees will continue to go up. The question that needs to be answered is whether Comcast can make the merger work because big media deals over the past 15 years including the AOL Time Warner agreement have been failures. Clear Channel bought out thousands of radio stations following the 1996 Tele Communication Act passage by Congress which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton and that has been a disaster for the company. And for those who are worried about the direction Brian Roberts might take NBC News, here is a question. What kind of job did General Electric do in covering the news? One of GE's properties is MSNBC, a so-called news channel which like FOX News Channel and CNN doesn't cover news but is long on shrill and fake confrontational arguments led by carnival barkers. NBC Dateline once blew up a General Motors truck in 1992 in a staged report called "Waiting to Explode" which questioned the safety of GM trucks.

Comcast has been a major player on the sports scene for a long time. The company owns the Philadelphia Flyers and 76ers and has partnerships thorough Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association, golf and limited National Football League team business arrangements. NBC Sports has properties; a combined Comcast NBC is stronger and has some money to spend. That is music to the ears of sports owners and promoters but not necessarily the sound that makes Mickey Mouse and Disney too happy as ESPN is no longer alone as the undisputed heavyweight champion of sports programming.

Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com

Major league sports facing a turbulent 2011
MONDAY, 03 JANUARY 2011 12:05

BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/major-league-sports-facing-a-turbulent-2011

It is rather silly making any sort of sports predictions. The predictor is generally wrong and does not have the best available data on hand to accurately come up with what is going to happen particularly in National Football League and National Basketball Association business in the next few months.
The 2011 big time sports calendar has two rather significant dates that could throw hard core National Football League and National Basketball Association fans into a depressed state. The National Football League owners and players will have no collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in place on March 4 unless there is major movement and the National Basketball Association owners and players will have no collective bargaining agreement in place on July 1 unless there is major movement.
Major League Baseball owners and players will have a full 2011 season as that industry's CBA does not expire until December and the National Hockey League will continue playing games until the 2012 Stanley Cup final game as the league's owners and players have an accord until then.
The National Football League owners and players have been practicing saber rattling for a while. The owners are well fortified to do battle with an enormous war chest built on over-the-air, cable and satellite TV revenues that FOX's Rupert Murdoch, GE's Jeffrey Immelt (NBC), Sumner Redstone's CBS, Robert Iger's ESPN division of Disney and DirecTV have endowed. The owners can withstand a lockout of players; meanwhile the National Football League Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith has been urging his players to save money because there might not be a 2011 NFL season.
Smith has filed a protest with the Special Master who was appointed by a federal court to oversee NFL matters about the use of television money to assist the owners through a trying time. Smith may also decertify the association in an attempt to circumvent an owners lockout and claim the players are independent contractors with valid working agreements with the teams. If the Special Master, Stephen Burbank, sides with Smith — the owners could cave because there will be no money in the bank and the owners lose significant leverage.
The decertifying process may take a long time. That would take the dispute to another battlefield, the judicial system.
The NFL owners and players dispute is all about money. The owners, who are 31 of the biggest captains of industry in the country (Green Bay is run by a board of directors) want to reduce salaries by 18 percent and cut the players share of the football generated revenues from 59 to 48 percent. It appears Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson, a former player with the Baltimore Colts in 1959 and 1960 and a major player in the fast food industry until his retirement from that line of work in the 1990s, is leading the lockout charge.
Richardson is not the only one. The owners want to change certain elements of the collective bargaining agreement including rookie's salaries. The NFL has a hard salary cap but teams have been about to devise ways of getting around it.
The owners have a wide gap between the big markets and small markets in terms of generating local revenues. The old "Leaguethink" idea pioneered in the 1960s by NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle (who, in 1960, co-opted the notion from American Football League founder Lamar Hunt who borrowed it from Branch Rickey after Rickey was establishing the Continental Baseball League in 1958, a league that never got off the ground). The "Leaguethink" idea was simple and in a way was a form of socialism. All the teams shared equally in TV revenues and shared gate receipts (Rickey, who was a sports business genius, understood the role TV was going to play in sports back in the 1950s even though his fellow baseball executives disdained the idea of TV because potentially it could cut into home attendance — Rickey understood that TV could be both a money maker and marketing tool).
The owners are now divided between the "haves" NFC East, Dallas' Jerry Jones, the Giants Mara/Tisch, Philadelphia's Jeffrey Lurie, Washington's Dan Snyder, half of the AFC East, New England's Robert Kraft and the Jets Woody Johnson, and a few other owners like Houston's Robert McNair and Denver's Pat Bowlen and the smaller market owners. The big boys no longer want to share local revenues with Buffalo's Ralph Wilson, Cincinnati's Mike Brown, and Jacksonville's Wayne Weaver to name three teams. But if the 32 NFL teams hold together, the thought is the can extract concessions from Smith and make up lost revenues to players by expanding the season to 18 games.
The dispute will be all about money and it will be interesting to see if the players try and collectively bargain a much better health care plan for the present players and the retirees.
One of the buried issues in all of the owners-players labor talks is that a good many former players are under 65 but a getting handouts from the government in disability and Medicare — it is rather interesting that Tea Party members shouting about entitlements have not bothered to look at the afterlife of football players and how many of them have been abandoned and are cared for by government programs.
The NFL off-season will include the annual draft but if there owners lockout the players out, the players will have to scramble to be insured by COBRA as the owners will be cutting off NFL benefits. There will be no free agency, no mini-camps, no organized team activities, no training camp and no games until the two sides work out an agreement.
The NBA dispute is also about money. Commissioner David Stern wants to get about $800 million in concessions from his players and give small market teams a chance for profitability. The league wants to cut guaranteed contracts (the NFL does not have guaranteed contracts), trim the number of years on a contract, harden a loose salary cap and get cost certainty. There is no real revenue sharing between the haves (Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks) and the have-nots (the league-owned New Orleans Hornets, Memphis Grizzlies). The league will lockout the players on July 1 and that means Carmelo Anthony and other free agents cannot shop around their services and may in fact be caught in a new system which could cause them to lose millions of dollars.
It is unlikely that small market owners (who have been asking Stern for years to address the revenue sharing issue) will go along with any new deal that does not produce a hard salary cap and a reduction of revenue to the players.
Like the NFL owners, the NBA owners will have a war chest from Iger's ESPN and from Time Warner's Jeffrey Bewkes (Turner Sports). NBA owners will also be getting revenues from regional cable TV networks (the Knicks owners, the Dolan family, are a multiple system operator with Cablevision and their assets include the Madison Square Garden Network, the Philadelphia 76ers owner, Comcast, is a multi system operator and the company's assets include regional cable sports networks in Philadelphia and other outposts including Washington, Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago). The owners will be getting money and can withstand a lockout.
The cable TV issue is one that needs to be addressed by Congress. House Speaker John Boehner and Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid, if they are truly doing the business of the American people, need to grill NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, NBA Commissioner David Stern, Iger, Bawkes, Comcast's Brian Roberts, MSG's Charles Dolan (although it would be a comedy to watch Dolan's son James testifying in a Congressional hearing) and ask them if it is just for the leagues to have their lockout war chests funded by cable TV basic expanded tier consumers — many of who never watch sports but are forced to buy ESPN, TNT, regional sports networks because of tiering.
While House Speaker Boehner and Senator Majority Leader Reid are at it, they should call down Murdoch, Immelt and Redstone and ask if they believe that it is a proper use of a television license to use monies generated on the public airwaves (FOX, NBC and CBS) to underwrite a lockout.

Local municipalities should also be checking into their agreements with cable franchises (Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner and the others) to see if they plan to offer rebates to consumers if programming (NFL and NBA games) has been canceled due to a lockout — after all consumers are paying for the programming.
No cable system has ever refunded money for missed games from the 1994-95 baseball strike, the 1994-95 NHL lockout, the 1998-99 NBA lockout and the 2004-05 NHL lockout.
Local municipalities that have built stadiums and arenas may not be sitting on the sidelines in these potential labor disputes either. Cash poor governments cannot allow owners to skip payments on rent in the event of a lockout. After the 1998-99 NBA lockout, Oakland went after Golden State Warriors owners Chris Cohan after he refused to pay rent on the arena because his Warriors didn't play games. Cohan lost an arbitration hearing and had to pay rent for missed games.
Local governments should be diligent and not sit on the sidelines if they are doing business for the people. They need to force owners to live up to their leases even if there is a lockout.
Major League Baseball owners and players have been rather quiet about the end of the industry's CBA in December. MLB has been in a good spot in that they have been third in the CBA derby since 2004. Both sides watched the 2004-05 NHL lockout when the owners shut down the industry. The NBA's CBA came up during the NHL lockout and the players and owners came up with a deal to avert an NBA showdown and soon after that, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and the Major League Baseball Players Association Executive Director Don Fehr worked out an agreement with no work stoppage. Fehr has left the baseball players and is now trying to straighten out the mess at the National Hockey League Players Association. Fehr has many more problems to solve in his new post with his constituency than to worry about what NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and his owners are planning for 2012. Once Fehr reins in the various players association factions, then he can deal with Bettman and the owners.
The posturing will continue in the NFL through the Super Bowl, and the barbs from the players and the owners in the NBA will continue through the NBA Finals. The big game for both sides is not the Super Bowl or the NBA Finals. It is winning the battle for the CBA crown.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com, Barnes and Noble or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com

Big Ten Conference expansion on hold keeps Rutgers in Big East for now
WEDNESDAY, 08 DECEMBER 2010 21:35

BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/big-ten-conference-expansion-on-hold-keeps-rutgers-in-big-east-for-now
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
For the foreseeable future, Rutgers University will not be dropping out of the Big East and join the 12-school (along with the University of Chicago — which doesn't field big time football or basketball teams) Big Ten. The Midwest-based conference announced on Monday that their "expansion" mode has been put on hiatus and the conference isn't looking to add any school for the time being.
"I think, we will continue to look for expansion for another year," said Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez. "I think everybody was thing (last May) as schools were moving and looking that may be the direction (a 16-team conference). Our commissioner and our league decided to study it for a year."
There seem to be some whispers that college presidents and chancellors are becoming gun shy about conference expansion and that the industry wants to see the issue quiet down somewhat. The Big Ten seemed to have Rutgers, Syracuse, Maryland, Missouri and Notre Dame as targets along with Texas. The Big Ten did take Nebraska. The Big East added Texas Christian University, the Pacific-10 plucked Utah from the WAC and Colorado from the Big 12, which now has ten schools after losing Colorado and Nebraska.
Of course as television needs programming and is ready to throw money into big-time college sports, there will be further realignments to please the barons of TV. Television runs the show no matter what college officials say, at least in football.
"I'm thrilled we have Nebraska," said Alvarez who oversees a 23-team, $90 million enterprise at the Madison, Wisconsin school. "It's a great fit for us and the thing that is exciting for me being a Nebraska graduate and having some many friends in Nebraska, how excited they were and how open they were to come to the Big Ten. You think there is loyalty there but as they say it is not the Big 8. The Big 12, they don't play Oklahoma every year, there is not that tradition, they weren't losing anything. So they are very excited to come and it really is a good fit for us."
Alvarez wasn't surprised that the Fort Worth, Texas-based TCU took a Big East spot despite not being close to any Big East schools.
"TCU has to look for what is best for them," said Alvarez. "Obviously getting into a (Bowl Championship Series) BCS Conference, it makes sense. If it makes sense for them, I have no problem with it. I don't think it is all about TV (the Big East has some major markets in New York and now the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and some midsized markets in Tampa, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati for football). TV is part of it. Aligning yourself in a conference with an automatic berth in the BCS is important. You have to balance the budget. If you are in charge of it, you make decisions that are best for your school. In my case (Wisconsin), I have 23 sports and football is the engine so whatever you can do in football to allow everyone else (the other sports at the school) to compete. You make the best decision for your program."
The Big East was a basketball conference that morphed into a football conference because that is where the money is. Seton Hall, Villanova, Providence, Georgetown, St. John's, Marquette and DePaul don't have big time football programs and Notre Dame remains an independent even though the school competes in basketball and other sports in the Big East. Former National Football League Commissioner Paul Tagliabue is helping the conference with expanding the football playing schools. TCU will be the ninth football playing school and in all probability, the Big East will add a 10th school in the very near future.
Wisconsin will not play Rutgers in the Big Ten anytime soon, but that doesn't mean Alvarez is ruling out any New York metropolitan contests. Alvarez has had some conversations with the New York Yankees brass about playing a game at Yankee Stadium under "the what's best for the school financially" guise.
"I have talked to the Yankees, we have a great alumni base here (in the New York-New Jersey area)," said Alvarez. "If it makes sense and it would have to be early in the year, it would have to be in September that's the issue. I have talked to them about that and the Commissioner of Baseball (Bud Selig, Wisconsin alum) told him he can arrange them to be out of town for 10 days.
"We are looking at those (neutral site games) but I have to have seven home games and that is a mandate from my people. We have to have seven home games and if we can do something on a neutral site that makes sense and helps us in recruiting and satisfy some of our alums, we would look into that."
So is the turmoil of earlier this year with conferences beefing up over? "It appears to be," said Alvarez.
The key word there being "appears". But no one has shut the door on additional movement. Television money is flooded Big Ten schools as each is getting more than $23 million annually because of various deals. The Big East despite having some big markets is getting about one-third of the television dollars going to Big Ten schools.
When Comcast does take over NBC, the Philadelphia-based cable TV giant could rebrand the Versus network as some sort of NBC cable sports network and then go after major conference contracts and any conference that is adding or has added key markets could help pry more money out of ESPN, FOX or whatever Comcast plans to call Versus in the future. Rutgers may be a New Jersey school, but the football team's TV market is the New York metropolitan area, the nation's top market. That alone makes Rutgers a major player in the conference shuffle.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com

Journalist Sarah Palin should ask why TV money will fund an NFL lockout

TUESDAY, 30 NOVEMBER 2010 11:52

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/journalist-sarah-palin-should-ask-why-tv-money-will-fund-an-nfl-lockout

BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
So Sarah Palin wants "to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism." Palin also has "a communications degree. I studied journalism, who, what, where, when, and why of reporting." Let's take Sarah Palin, who has a communications degree from one of the five colleges she attended in six years, at her word that she really wants to help clean up journalism. Let's give the former Alaska TV sportscaster an assignment and see how she does.
Palin is employed by Rupert Murdoch's FOX News Channel so it should be rather easy for her, as a onetime Vice Presidential candidate in the United States, to score an interview with the naturalized American citizen Murdoch. Palin, the former sportscaster, should begin the interview with her boss with a simple question. "Mr. Murdoch, why are you helping to underwrite the National Football League lockout which is slated to begin in March 2011?"
Palin's second question of the Australian-born media mogul should get right to the core of Murdoch's FOX News Channel and New York Post audience. "How does your guarantee of paying hundreds of millions of dollars in rights fees to the National Football League in 2011 help your audience, "real" Americans, even in the event that the 31 owners and Green Bay's management lockout the players and no games are played?
Palin should then just go with the flow and ask a few more questions "is providing financial support for a labor action by a custodian of the public airwaves — Murdoch owns a number of television stations across the United States. He had to become an American citizen to do that after being an illegal alien owning the New York Post before he was naturalized — a proper use of a television station license?" And, "is it in the public interest to use monies generated by News Corp-owned stations (including WNYW and WWOR in New York and WTFX in Philadelphia and 24 other stations), to support the NFL ownership group?"
To expand her report and show off her journalism skills Palin should invite Jeffrey Immelt, the General Electric Chairman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer (and at present owner of NBC), Robert Iger, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Walt Disney Company (and ESPN owner), Sumner Redstone, the Chairman of CBS and Michael White, the President and CEO of DirecTV to appear on her report on the potential NFL lockout.
Iger should jump at the opportunity to chat with Palin after Sarah's oldest daughter Bristol brought new viewers and tons of phone calls over the past few months to the ABC show, "Dancing With the Stars," along with more advertising dollars.
Palin could pose the same questions to Iger and Redstone that she did to Murdoch and ask whether it is ethical that Iger's ESPN and White's DirecTV is taking subscribers money to provide a cushion for NFL owners. After all, Congress in 1984 kept ESPN alive (along with other cable TV networks) by allowing multiple system (cable TV) operators to bundle financially struggling networks like ESPN, CNN and The Weather Channel and to place them on a basic expanded tier, which is a direct restraint of trade in a free market society. The result was cable consumers now pay for networks whether they watch them or not. All basic subscribers pay for channels that only a fraction watches; and it is all legal because of the Cable TV Act of 1984 which was signed into law by the champion of free market — President Ronald Reagan. The whole issue of why media companies and by extension their news divisions (with the exception of DirecTV, which does not have a news division) are supporting NFL owners needs to be explained to the very "real" Americans that Palin says she stands with.
Murdoch, Iger, Immelt, Redstone and White agreed to individual contracts with the NFL and paid a lot of money for the right. They also told the NFL that they would cover (financial not in depth news) the owners in the event of a lockout and at some point down the road would get a rebate if the owners' lockout in 2011 forced the cancellation of games. But the NFL never lowers rights fees. When the contracts are renegotiated down the road, the NFL will still have big leverage over the TV networks — NFL games are among the top rated TV shows in the United States and attract the 18-34, 18-49, 18-54 male demographic that advertisers want. The NFL TV guys, Dallas's Jerry Jones, Denver's Pat Bowen, can ask for the moon; but that doesn't mean Murdoch, Igor, Immelt, Redstone and White's predecessor at DirecTV needed to give the NFL whatever they wanted. The 2011 season rights fees will go into the owners' war chest in the battle with the players; and because of that the owners will have an enormous edge over the players in the bargaining talks, as they can hold out while players' careers are brief and any games lost to the lockout will impact the players' pockets far more than the owners'.
The owners want to reduce the players' take of revenues from 59 to 48 percent and chop salaries by 18 percent. The TV people are in the owners' corner in the labor action which brings up a point. Are the TV networks shilling for the rich and elite, or do they care about "real" Americans? What does that say about their ability to real provide "fair and balanced" news?
In all seriousness, could ABC, CBS and NBC news divisions really report on the NFL owners' lockout in full detail, knowing the corporate bosses are providing much needed leverage for the owners? Could the FOX News Channel and ESPN lay out the story? The answer is no. No one on the FOX News Channel, MSNBC or ESPN is going to criticize Murdoch, Immelt or Iger. Katie Couric and her CBS news division is not going to go after Redstone. But Palin did run for Vice President and as a journalist she should have the gravitas to actually get Murdoch, Iger, Immelt, Redstone and White on record to explain their decisions.
Murdoch's FOX syndication arm (FOX is not a true TV network) owes the NFL an awful lot. Murdoch got the rights to NFC Games in 1993 with a four-year, $1.58 billion offer beating out CBS. Murdoch's FOX had The "Simpsons" and a few other programs like "Married With Children" and "Beverly Hills 90210" that garnered some interest on many weak stations. With the NFL, a powerful TV franchise in his back pocket, Murdoch also took away two strong CBS affiliates in Detroit and Milwaukee in early 1994 and all of that resulted in the loss of audience share for CBS' Sunday night news magazine, "60 Minutes." FOX also got a promotional platform for prime time shows during NFL games and ended up with a Super Bowl. The NFL built FOX and allowed Murdoch to move ahead with the FOX News Channel. CBS returned to the NFL in 1998, taking away NBC's AFC package with an eight-year deal. NBC returned in 2006 with a Sunday night package, Disney's ABC Sports was folded into ESPN's camp and in 2006, Monday Night Football shifted from over-the-air ABC to the cable ESPN.
Palin, the journalist, could conclude her in depth report by getting into the political arena by interviewing Congressional Republicans and asking if they plan to review the whole question of why and how Murdoch, Iger, Immelt, Redstone and White are using public airwaves or cable/satellite TV subscriber fees. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform seems like a good place to start hearings on television's role in an NFL lockout.
The players association is asking elected officials in NFL cities to get involved with the negotiations, claiming there is a huge potential for major economic losses with NFL football in 2011. The NFL Players Association Executive Director should be playing the public financing of stadiums card just to educate the public about the real costs of football and sports in the United States and to reveal how "real" Americans are paying a variety of taxes to support sports facilities around the country. Palin, who apparently favors small government and less government spending, should ask about the billions upon billions of public tax dollars that are spent for facilities, including the one she approved in Wasilla, Alaska when she was mayor of that city for a junior hockey franchise that ended up in her town.


Palin is right about the quality of journalism today. Glenn Beck passes for a journalist, as do all of the yellers and screamers on cable TV news and AM talk radio. None of them really goes into any depth or perhaps even has the ability to be a savant even though CNN's Anderson Cooper is trying to "keep them honest."
The entire politics of the potential NFL lockout includes a conversation on workers' rights, medical/health benefits, retirement payments, government's role in infrastructure (stadiums), the National Labor Relations Board, Congress, the Oval Office and the media. Sarah Palin, of all people, could use her FOX credentials to work the story and get the info out to "real" Americans. Somehow though, it seems very unlikely that Palin would find the time and do the proper interviews with the proper people. "Real" Americans may not have an entire NFL season starting in March which includes the April Draft, mini-camps, free agency and then finally training camp. Someone should explain why this is happening and how Murdoch, Iger, Immelt, Redstone and White have fingerprints all over the potential loss of the NFL during next season by underwriting an owners' lockout.
Evan Weiner, the winner of the United States Sports Academy's 2010 Ronald Reagan Media Award, is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Politics of Sports Business." His book, "The Business and Politics of Sports, Second Edition is available at www.bickley.com or amazonkindle. He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com

The Whale, the WHA and a Renegade Cowboy

By Evan Weiner

September 21, 2010

http://www.examiner.com/business-of-sports-in-national/the-whale-the-wha-and-a-renegade-cowboy

(New York, N. Y.) -- There was an announcement in Hartford, Connecticut that former New England-Hartford Whalers owner Howard Baldwin has taken over the day-to-day business operations of the American Hockey League's Hartford Wolf Pack and the team will be renamed the Connecticut Whale. The Hartford team will still be owned by the New York Rangers and Madison Square Garden but Baldwin would like to bring the NHL back to Hartford. Baldwin brought the World Hockey Association to Hartford in 1974 after two years in Boston and his team joined the NHL in 1979. The team was moved to Carolina in 1997 playing first in Greensboro and finally in Raleigh.

There is significance in Baldwin’s return. Nearly 40 years ago, Baldwin became a pioneer in hockey by joining with owners to form the World Hockey Association. The National Hockey league took notice and tried to cut off viable markets for the new league by expanding to Uniondale, New York and Atlanta, Georgia.

Baldwin helped altered the course of the business of hockey.

Baldwin has been involved in hockey on and off for four decades and was one of the original owners in the WHA back in 1972. The WHA changed the face of pro hockey and in a sense freed NHL players from being tied their entire careers to one team unless they were traded.

A lot has been written about Curt Flood's attempt to control his career in baseball but Flood never did see free agency. Major League Baseball's reserve clause was broken in 1975, three years after NHL players jumped to the WHA after completing NHL contracts. Hockey and basketball players were more successful at getting free agency than their baseball counterparts. The hockey and basketball players had another league to use for negotiating leverage. New leagues are difference makers. Eventually basketball and hockey players would win free agency even though the ABA and WHA leftovers were gobbled up by the older leagues. The American Football league, the American Basketball Association and the World Hockey Association shook up the established leagues and the newspapers reporters who acted an a public relations arm for the old guard.

Bobby Hull became the first player to make a million dollars a season in hockey. In 1972, the 33-year-old Chicago Blackhawk all-star jumped from the National Hockey League to the upstart World Hockey Association and in the process began a salary escalation in a sport that was notorious for keeping salaries suppressed.

Hull left Chicago for Winnipeg, Manitoba after owner Ben Hatskin agreed to give Hull the money.

"1972, yes you are right, it seems like yesterday," said Hull in a 1990
interview about becoming hockey's first million-dollar player. "That was just by accident. They kept badgering me and badgering me, the WHA, and I told them that I didn't want to go to Winnipeg and I wanted to stay in Chicago and that was the only place I was going to play. Finally, I told them I wanted a million bucks to get rid of me because they wanted to know what it would take to get me to Winnipeg. I told them a million bucks just to get rid of them. Had I known that they were even going to try and raise money, I would have told them ten million bucks or something like that."

Bobby Hull grew up in an age where loyalty meant more than a paycheck, when the National Hockey League had six teams, Boston, Chicago, Detroit and New York in the United States, Montreal and Toronto in Canada. The
National Hockey League didn't even pay its players as well as those in the "minor pro" Western Hockey League. But it was the top league in the world and players literally fought to stay in it.


Hull would eventually sign after the 11 other WHA owners chipped into and gave Ben Hatskin the money to sign the Golden Jet.

"Had I known they that were even going to think about raising a million
dollars," Hull continued. "Who did I think was worth a million dollars back then? I was the first one. I thought if I threw a million bucks at them, they would say who is this renegade cowboy wanting a million dollars and they would leave me alone.

"In all sports, that was it, that's why I thought it was so astronomical, I thought they'd say get lost. Who was this guy? They gave me a million dollars and then I got $250,000 a year to play. That was a bonus. That was the first million dollars, I don't know anybody else who made it. I know none of the boxers made it at that time, the riders, the jockeys; I know none of the golfers had ever made that.

"Right now, knowing what I know now, I would have said 10 and I am sure they would have balked at that."

Bobby Hull had to win a court battle to go to Winnipeg. So did Boston Bruins winger John Mc Kenzie in order to jump to Philadelphia. His contract, as was Hull's contract was done and the NHL was under the impression it had perpetual rights to players. They didn't, at least according to Judge Leon Higginbotham upheld the WHA's legal claim to NHL players who had signed their contractual obligations.

"The NHL is merely sustaining the fate which monopolists must face when they can no longer continue their prior total dominance of the market," Higginbotham wrote on an action filed by McKenzie.

The WHA was never fiscally stable and a lot of franchises moved or simply went out of business. Players didn't get paid on time or never were paid. But the
World Hockey Association was a good thing for players despite its franchise movement and bankruptcies.

"It allowed a player a choice of playing in the NHL or somewhere else," said Senator and Hockey Hall of Famer Frank Mahovlich, who left Detroit for the WHA in 1973. "Up to that particular time, it was a monopoly and you never had an opportunity to increase your salary, and it wasn't that great for the players. In 1972, when the WHA started, it gave us that chance.

"I think Bobby Hull was the first one to go over to the WHA and gave credibility to the league. It increased our salaries and as time went on and we got competitive with baseball."

The World Hockey Association went after 18 year old players and signed them. There is a list of NHL elite players who began in the WHA in the mid to late 1970s that included Rod Langway, Rob Ramage, Ken Linseman,
Mike Gartner, Mark Messier and a 17 year old named Wayne Gretzky.
It was Linseman who would force the NHL to change its draft rules in 1976. Linseman, who was 19 years old at the time, sued the WHA who would not allow him to join the league as players 20 and younger were not eligible to play in either the NHL or WHA. Linseman won his case and opened the door for "underaged" hockey players. Gretzky would sign with Indianapolis. He was traded after a handful of games in 1978 because the team was broke.

After the Indianapolis Racers folded, the WHA was left with Birmingham, Cincinnati, Edmonton, New England (Hartford), Quebec and Winnipeg. The financially ailing league did get a deal done to merge with the NHL, but the Montreal Canadiens owner the Molson Breweries said no and blocked the agreement. Hockey fans and beer drinkers in Edmonton, Quebec and Winnipeg threatened a boycott of Molson's products and ultimately the beer drinkers and Molson's bottom line won out. Edmonton, New England, Quebec City and Winnipeg were admitted into the league.

The NHL owners picked up an expansion fee, Gretzky stayed in Edmonton, Gordie Howe in Hartford and that ended the player war. The WHA changed hockey in numerous ways. The league went to American Sun Belt Cities, signed European talent and Baldwin's Hartford team had a hand in what eventually became the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, ESPN. The Whale is back in Hartford after the team helped transformed hockey and sports.

Evan Weiner is an award winning author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Business and Politics of Sports." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com

SenatiorWill the New York Giants or Jets be blacked out on local TV this season?
MONDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 2010 12:59


http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/will-the-new-york-giants-or-jets-be-blacked-out-on-local-tv-this-season
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS
On the opening weekend of the 2010 National Football League season, neither the East Rutherford-based New York Giants nor the New York Jets sold out the New Meadowlands Stadium. In theory, neither the Giants- Carolina Panthers game nor the Jets-Baltimore Ravens contest should have been seen in the New York area. On over-the-area, cable (ESPN, NFL Network) or satellite (DirecTV) in a 75-mile radius of New York City. But the game was on television despite the fact that the Giants and Jets did not sell out all of their inventory (seats) to the games.
Apparently the failure to sell club seats and luxury boxes, the really big-ticket items, doesn't count when it comes to National Football League blackout rules. So for TV purposes, the Jets and Giants not being able to sell out seats because they were designated as club seats or luxury boxes gives the two teams some leeway. The two teams New York City area fan base is much better off in terms of TV than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders fan bases. Tampa Bay failed to sell out the team's Tampa stadium during the NFL's opening week in a game against the Cleveland Browns.
The Chargers' home game on Sunday against Jacksonville was blacked out in the San Diego market because the stadium didn't sell out.
The Oakland Raiders home opener against St. Louis was blacked out on September 19 because the team did not sell out the Oakland Coliseum. Oakland's last home game telecast in the San Francisco Bay Area was the opening game of the 2009 season against San Diego.
Other teams will probably not sell out games during the 2010 and that has caught the attention of Congress. Ohio Senator. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown has asked the NFL to take a close look at its blackout policy. The Ohio Senator thinks the league should take into consideration that the country has not recovered from the September 2008 economic meltdown and that people cannot afford pricey tickets.
In 2009, there were 22 blackouts across the league. In 2008, there were just five. The NFL will keep the policy in place even though a Senator is asking them to reconsider. This could get nasty at some point this fall if there is a trend of non-sellouts. Congress created the NFL as the league exists today with the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and Congress can make life miserable for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, the 31 owners and the people who run Green Bay.
Exhibit A was the 2007 season final Saturday night game between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants when New England was on the verge of a 16-0 season. That game was scheduled to be on the NFL Network with just local broadcasts in New York and Boston. The NFL Network was having problems with carriage with various multiple systems operators (including Time Warner, Cablevision and Charter limiting the NFL Network's reach to 43 million households) which meant a great deal of the country could not see the game.
The non-availability of the game caused a stir on the Hill in Washington and by week's end, the game suddenly appeared on CBS, NBC and the NFL Network. When Congress is motivated, things get done in a bi-partisan manner rapidly without rancor.
Particularly in sports.
The NFL blackout rule has been bounced around for six decades. Television is both a blessing and a curse for sports in the minds of some owners and sports officials. What TV really is for sports is a three-hour infomercial selling the product. In this case, the NFL. But in 1950, NFL Commissioner Bert Bell told his owners to blackout home games to get people to buy tickets for home games instead of in front of the television. Bell's plea to his owners came after the Los Angeles Rams ownership saw a 50-percent drop in attendance in 1949 compared to 1948 after the team signed a deal with the Admiral Television Company in Southern California. Admiral was a maker of televisions and used Rams games to sell TVs not unlike David Signoff who put programs on his NBC radio network in the 1920s to sell RCA radios. By 1951, the NFL was in the courtroom defending its blackout policy. In 1953, Judge Allan K. Grim, upheld the league's blackout policy believing that it was not in violation of anti-trust laws.
The blackout problem resurfaced in 1957, when the NFL Championship Game was blacked out in the host city of Detroit despite being a sellout.
Because of the blackout rule, Chicago football fans in the 1950s hardly ever saw a football game. Chicago was the only two-team city in the NFL with the Bears and Cardinals hosting home games on a weekly basis over the course of the 12 game schedule. If the Cardinals and Bears played one another, then one weekend would be freed up for CBS' WBBM in Chicago to televise a game. Eventually the Bidwill family's Cardinals would play two "home" games a year in other locales such as Minneapolis or Buffalo. The NFL finally solved the "Chicago problem" when Bidwill's Cardinals moved to St. Louis on March 13, 1960. The Bidwills went to St. Louis after receiving $500,000 from the Bears, the NFL, and CBS.
Congress really got involved in sports broadcasting in 1961 and changed the sports landscape of the United States. In its early years of television, post World War II, TV contracts were negotiated locally. In the 1950's, the NFL was under a court-ordered injunction that prevented it from signing a single league-wide contract with a network. Instead, each NFL team had a separate deal with a local television station. For instance in 1960, the New York Giants received $340,000 for their deal, but the Green Bay Packers received $105,000. In 1960, the just established American Football League, not limited by the injunction, pooled the broadcast rights and signed a national network contract with the American Broadcasting Company (which was at the time, a limited TV network trying to make inroads against the established Columbia Broadcasting System and the National Broadcasting Company.
On September 30, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed Public Law 87-331, better known as the Sports Broadcasting Act, which exempted professional sports leagues from antitrust scrutiny allowing them to sell television rights on a league-wide basis.
After President Kennedy signed the bill, the NFL pooled its television rights and signed a deal with CBS for 1962 for $4.65 million annually.
The blackout policy was challenged again in 1962 when the Giants hosted Green Bay in the NFL Championship at Yankee Stadium. Judge Edward Weinfeld upheld the NFL position and denied an injunction, which would have forced CBS to televise the game in the New York City area. The blackout policy would remain in effect until 1973, when Congress passed experimental legislation, which was supposed to have lasted until 1976, that stated that any NFL game that was declared a sellout 72 hours prior to kickoff be made available for local TV.
The NFL renewed its contracts with CBS for the regular-season and the championship games in the years 1964 through 1967. Sarnoff was extremely unhappy with the NFL spurning his NBC network and decided to bankroll the American Football League. The TV monies poured in but owners had to use those funds to hire expensive talent like Joe Namath who signed a $427,000 deal with the New York Jets in 1965. The NBC-AFL partnership would eventually force the AFL and NFL to merge, a marriage that had to be approved by Congress. That happened in October 1966. By 1969, television income had risen to $1.6 million per team in the NFL and $900,000 per team in the AFL.
Once the leagues merged, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle began dabbling with the thought of a regular Monday night game. In 1966, CBS did two games. But Rozelle thought a regular series would be a ratings grabber. Both William Paley's CBS and Sarnoff's NBC declined because they had hit Monday night programming, but still ratings challenged ABC signed on in 1969 but with the understanding that Monday Night Football would be more than just a game. It had to be entertainment as well, which is why Howard Cosell and Don Meredith became the stars of the show not the players per se. 1969. Monday Night Football debuted in 1970, with ABC acquiring the rights to televise 13 NFL regular-season Monday night games in 1970, 1971, and 1972/
In 1969, four-year television contracts, under which CBS would televise all NFC games (between 1970-73) and NBC all AFC games (except Monday night games), with a division between the networks of the televising of the Super Bowl and AFC-NFC Pro Bowl games, were signed.
Congress created a major revenue source for the NFL by passing the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 and to this day, both House and Senate members know that. The NFL may be able to fend off Sherrod Brown but what happens if other lawmakers decide this is an issue? If Brown gets addition support on the Hill, Roger Goodell may be explaining why the NFL still needs a blackout rule and how the Giants and Jets haven't sold all of their Meadowlands inventory and yet the league televises Jets and Giants home games in the New York market with less than a full house but San Diego, Oakland and Tampa can't. Things might get nasty later this fall if teams are not selling out but the consumer wants the NFL.
Evan Weiner is an award winning author, radio-TV commentator and speaking on "The Business and Sports of Politics" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com

Discarded NFL players are often forgotten in retirement

Discarded NFL players are often forgotten in retirement
FRIDAY, 23 JULY 2010 16:15

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/discarded-nfl-players-are-often-forgotten-in-retirement

BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
THE POLITICS OF SPORTS BUSINESS
As National Football League training camps begin to open up around the country, (the New York Jets in Cortland, N.Y. on Aug. 1, the New York Giants in Albany, N.Y. also on Aug. 1 and the Philadelphia Eagles at Lehigh in Bethlehem, Pa. on Monday) some 2,560 players are getting ready for what has become an annual ritual — two a day sessions upon the broiling sun to prove they belong on the field. Eventually only 1,696 of them will make teams. A number of the 864 players who are "cut" might end up on practice squads where they make a minimum of $5,200 a week to hone their skills. Some of the players will be placed on injured reserve and will either return to the field or get cut when they are deemed healthy. Each team can keep as many as eight players on the payroll (practice squad) which means 256 players might get another shot at a roster spot when a team loses a player to an injury.
Football is a tough game. Americans have been sold on football's brutality since the October 31, 1960 CBS documentary called "The Violent World of Sam Huff" which was narrated by Walter Cronkite. Yes TV networks once did documentaries in a time when TV news did reporting, research and presented facts and not worried about being profitable. In the 1970s, Al Primo convinced TV executives that news could be turned into entertainment and news divisions could make really big money. Cable TV news would take Primo's idea to the next level and began to feature raving lunatics screaming about their viewpoint because it made for "good TV". Huff was a linebacker with the New York Giants and was the first NFL player ever to appear on the cover of Time magazine on November 30, 1959. Huff's job was to "hurt people" because football was a "man's game" according to the accompanying Time magazine column.
The Huff piece came about 10 months after the "greatest football game ever" when Johnny Unitas led the Baltimore Colts to an overtime win over the Giants in the NFL Championship Game, a game that captivated Americans and propelled the NFL from a "mom and pop" operation into the big time. Huff wasn't the best linebacker in the NFL but played for the "glamorous" New York Giants, a team that caught the fancy of Madison Avenue's advertising community and the TV networks which were headquartered in New York. Huff's Giants didn't win the 1958 championship, Baltimore did but Baltimore was led by a quiet crew cut quarterback named Unitas while the Giants had the handsome Frank Gifford and the tough as nails Huff.
Sam Huff became a successful businessman after his career. Unitas didn't. The quarterback who put the NFL on the map couldn't use his right hand as he got older because of a tendon injury he suffered in 1968. He has two knee replacements and heart bypass was denied disability. Unitas died in 2002 but the denial of disability to the quarterback who put the NFL on the map still draws the ire of former players in tough spots.
In 2007, Congresswoman Linda Sanchez, the chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, held a hearing because she wanted to have "an open discussion on the fairness of the system to severely disabled retired players." It was the start of drawing attention to the plight of retired NFL players. Johnny Unitas' widow Sandra was in Washington watching the hearings.
Huff in his Time magazine interview in 1959 didn't say anything new. A Life magazine had a cover story on December 3, 1971 "Suicide Squad Football's most violent men." Suicide squads have been given a more genteel name — "Special Teams" — but that's where rookies have to first earn their stripes in the NFL. Special teams are the worst assignments on the team and punt returns can be especially dangerous.
Football has been wrestling with players been injured and maimed for more than a century. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 told college presidents to clean up the game or he would ban football because of the number of deaths and injuries associated with the game.
New rules were implemented but the game remained violent and more than a century later, it seems that not much has changed. Players are still one play away from ending their career and that leads to the question.
Do the young players and some of the veterans who are about to go to camp know what they are getting into? If you listen to Dave Pear (and other older retired players who suffered life changing injuries playing football), the answer is no. Pear played in the NFL for six years as a defensive tackle between 1975 and 1980 with the Baltimore Colts, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Oakland Raiders. He played in one Pro Bowl and was a member of the Raiders Super Bowl XV championship team in 1980-81. Despite all of that, Pear wished he never played football.
"They think they are but no they are not," said Pear who broke his neck during his career and is facing hip replacement surgery in the very near future. "I don't begrudge the active players one penny and I suggest to them save as much as you can because when they become 40, 45, 50, 55, if things don't change, they are going to need the money because the union won't support them."
Pear is uninsurable and depends on government support such as Medicare and social security disability for his medical needs. But he might be one of the lucky ones as he has his wife's support and seems willing to take on the NFL and the NFLPA in an effort to get access to his benefits. He is one of the few with George Visger, Brent Boyd, Conrad Dobler and Mike Ditka who are speaking out about what they feel is the NFL and the NFLPA's abandonment of broken down old players who are in need.
But a lot of former players are not talking, partly because they have been trained since junior high school to "suck it up" and "be a man" which is the football mentality. Most players who play college football have no skills when they leave college because they don't get an education as they are too busy playing football. Sunday's warriors have been beaten over their heads since they were small and are team players even in retirement.
Retired players face high rates of divorce, face bankruptcies and have to put up with the pain of serious injuries on a daily basis. Alzheimer's disease and memory-related diseases in former players between the ages of 30 and 49 are 19 percent higher than average in that population pool.
"Football players wear a mask," said Pear. "All people see is a number. We are just a number that is how football works. Nobody knows how many retired players there (in dire straits)."
The House of Representatives has been holding hearings and monitoring the head injuries situation around the NFL. In 2009, several House members did not think NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell or the league has done enough to care for players with head injuries — concussions — and that the league really has not made much of an effort investigating long time damage from concussions suffered by players who worked in the NFL as players.
Pear and other retirees have been after the league and the players association to do more and it wasn't until Congress stepped in and began hearings in 2007 that the league and the players association took notice.
The NFL and researches have been at odds over the sports head trauma and later cognitive degeneration. Researchers looking into the relationship between concussions and cognitive problems have seen a link while the NFL's medical committee on concussions has not. On December 3, 2009, the NFL changed the league's concussion policy telling teams that if a player shows any significant sign of concussion that player must be removed from a game or practice and cannot return to the field on the same day.
New NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith told the retirees that "the rift is over" between the old players and the union and that help for those in need is on the way. But Pear doesn't see any evidence that the rift is really over. "The NFL grosses about eight and a half billion dollars a year, so where is the dough? (Former Executive Director, the late Gene) Upshaw once said we could not receive a pension and disability. Now we have the Gene Upshaw Dire Need Fund, but nothing has changed. So (to today's players) save every penny because once they realize they need medical insurance and can't get it."
When the cheering stops for a good number NFL players, there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Because of the injuries, a good many players became medical liabilities and are uninsurable. The National Football League does not guarantee contracts and if you are a marginal player who was injured, as soon as a doctor pronounces you healthy, you could be cut and your contract just ends with some severance pay.
Players of Pear's era got no severance and there was no guaranteed money given as a bonus. The bonus money is the only payment that a player will get, all players are then on a week-to-week basis. Virtually all of the players are replaceable on the spot.
"I know there is no pot of gold," said Pear. "In football, you are only a number. When you are a professional football player, you think you are invincible but when you get hit in the head, you injure your brain and life becomes different. We want our disability, our pension and future medical benefits. We don't want charity"
The football culture is different than real life. Football players grow up in a paramilitary setting as one long time NFL owner once said. That may explain why the National Football League Players Association has never been as effective as the Major League Baseball Players Association or the National Basketball Players Association or the National Hockey League Players Association in delivering guaranteed contracts to their members. The NFLPA seemingly has been pushing salaries up throughout the last four decades and not worrying about aftercare for former members until recently when the league and the players association were hauled before Congress to talk about the plight of former players.
"What they have done is create a myth," said Pear. "They have misled these young men telling them to be tough and work through injuries. Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL guarantee disability, pensions and medical their career. They (the NFL and the NFLPA) have convinced up that we do not deserve it. They have not allowed us access to our benefits which is not right and that has hurt players and players' families."
The National Football league Players Association has not kept records detailing the difficulties former union members have had in their post-football lives. One of the problems is that most players last 3 1/2 years in the league and pensions for players with three years in the league is not much. But the 3 1/2 year average is deceiving. Running backs may last 2.2 years and not be eligible for a pension or benefits as an example. The NFL may be recognized as the National Football League, but people in the NFL know the initials NFL as Not For Long. A good number of players never make it to where they can apply for a pension or disability and by the time they get to the NFL, after surviving high school and college ball, they probably have had some injury baggage. There is a disability benefit plan but according to Pear, it is more lip service than reality.
Congress, for the most part, has left the NFL issue behind although the House could call the NFL and NFLPA before them at any time. Pear is of the opinion that Congress, a class action suit by former players and chipping away at the NFL's image are three areas where the retired players can make the most strides.
The class action suit demanding compensation for injuries would need a law firm with deep pockets willing to take on the NFL and would require players to step up and talk about their problems. It might be easier to find a law firm than getting macho tough guys to go public. There is still a stigma attached even in retirement for players who don't toe the company line. Congress can go after two of the league's antitrust exemptions, the Sports Broadcast Act of 1961 which allowed the NFL to package all of the league's teams (14 in 1961, 32 in 2010) and sell the league to over-the-air and cable TV networks as one entity and undo the 1966 American Football league and National football League merger. That is highly unlikely but the NFL can be vulnerable there. The NFL does a remarkable job selling the product — football — but can the NFL afford images of broken down old stars and grunts who are relatively young, in their 40s and 50s parading around with ailments suffered in games?
It is unlikely that NFL media partners, Sumner Redstone's CBS (or any of the Redstone's holdings including Showtime), General Electric's NBC, Disney's ESPN or Rupert Murdoch's FOX businesses (including Fox News Channel or the FOX Business Channel) would tackle the issue. Newspapers are not partners with the NFL but newspaper sports sections depend on the NFL to fill up space for content and hope that readers will pay attention to ads and some of the ads are football related wrapped around Thanksgiving, weekends and playoff games leading up to the Super Bowl. A reporter sniffing around might lose access to the NFL and most writers would rather give up their right arms than be denied NFL access. The NFL controls the narrative and while Time Warner (the cable TV programmer and channel stock side not the stock side that owns Time Warner Cable) no longer has an NFL TV contract and could do pieces on CNN (a news network that hardly covers news), Time Warner might not want to show the NFL in a bad light. Image or perceived perception is everything to the NFL.
Pear fits into the study of short term memory problems. "There is a problem, you don't know what it is, as a player you are taught to work through it, but as you get older....I wished I never played. I enjoyed playing football when I was not injured. I played with a broken neck for two years. It wasn't worth it."
The image of the NFL, the romance of training camp, the start of the season goes fully on display by Aug. 1. The question for the 2,560 players who are in training camps is simple? Do you know what you are getting into? It is a question that only they can answer and perhaps instead of worrying about how much money they can get in the ongoing collective bargaining agreement, the players should check off safety concerns for both active and retired players (even though retired players don't pay the salaries of NFLPA staff) as their top priority in the next CBA.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio and TV commentator and speaking on "The Politics of Sports Business." He can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com

Next cable TV battle pits Time Warner against Disney

Next cable TV battle pits Time Warner against Disney
TUESDAY, 20 JULY 2010 14:46
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/movies/next-cable-tv-battle-pits-time-warner-against-disney#
BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
ANALYSIS
You probably have heard or seen the new ad campaign warning Time Warner Cable TV customers that you better circle the wagons and switch to some alternative mode of TV delivery system soon or else. You see Time Warner and the Disney Corporation are engaging in a very public negotiation about the future of WABC, ESPN and other Disney products on that multiple systems operator's channel lineup. Disney wants more money for their product, Time Warner is "holding the line" to protect their customers from rate hike.
If the talks breakdown over money, there is a chance that Time Warner cable subscribers might be deprived of Regis and Kelly along with ESPN programming and other Disney cable networks on September 1. Disney will just stop providing Time Warner with programming.
If you think you have heard this before you are correct. Last winter, it was the Dolan family's Cablevision versus the Disney Company and at stake was the Academy Awards. The Dolans and the Disneys reached a carriage deal during the Academy Awards and suddenly Channel 7 in New York magically reappeared after the two sides agreed on a money package.
Time Warner, like Cablevision, is both a multiple systems operator and a cable TV programmer. Normally this would be a conflict of interest but seemingly there are no rules in the cable TV industry and ultimately the losers are cable TV consumers who have to pay more and more money for a product that is non-essential — cable TV. People could live without cable TV but both cable TV multiple system operators and cable TV programmers know that the majority of their consumers might complain but very few actually get rid of the product. So both sides seek sympathy while they line their pockets with cable fees that are never broken down in bills and don't allow much freedom of choice as there is a basic tier and an expanded basic tier and then other channels.
Time Warner collects billions of dollars from consumers for CNN, Headline News, the Cartoon Network and TNT along with other products. But Time Warner decided to launch a "Roll Over or Get Tough" website trying to make a case in informing consumers that Time Warner is on patrol and will remain ever vigilant against companies like Disney who want to raise the price of ESPN and other networks.
Time Warner claims that the multiple systems operating company keeps just six cents of every dollar collected for net income, 54 cents goes to operational costs and network operators like Time Warner (oops), Comcast, Disney, NBC Universal, FOX and CBS get 40 cents of every dollar for their programming.
On the website, Time Warner asks. "What do you suppose would happen if that $.40 (of the money that Time Warner collects from customers for programming) in the example above rose by 300%? Simple math would tell you that the price that Time Warner Cable pays for programming would rise from $.40 to $1.60 (oops, someone failed math at Time Warner U as 300 percent would be a $1.20)... and that would clearly impact the price you have to pay.
"But, in recent years, that's exactly what has happened. Some of those broadcast TV stations and cable networks have been demanding enormous price increases — as much as 300% more. And if we don't pay up? Then they threaten to pull the plug on the sports, entertainment and news that you rely on.
"This puts us in a tough position — roll over and raise your prices or get tough and risk losing the programming you love"
The cable operators and other delivery systems are now banding together to fight the programmers who want to pull their signals in contract disputes. Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, DirecTV and Verizon asked the Federal Communications Commission in March to consider requiring broadcasters to maintain their signals during disputes and to go to arbitration when the two sides cannot agree on the fees on retransmission consent.
This is a case of big boys fighting over money and the public is being used as a prop to justify Time Warner's position. Consumers are paying top dollar for Time Warner properties and are helping to pay Larry King more than six million dollars a year on CNN (CNN's on air "talent" doesn't come cheaply) and hundreds of millions of dollars to the National Basketball Association. (It is estimated that the NBA may be getting as much as $930 million a year from United States national TV rights which are owned by two cable networks — Time Warner's Turner Sports and Disney's ESPN). TBS also signed big contract entertainment deals for comedy and drama TV along with Conan O'Brien and George Lopez.
Last April, the National Collegiate Athletic Association-CBS and Time Warner signed an agreement that will give the over-the-air network, CBS, and the cable/broadband/wireless distributor Turner Broadcasting, the right to show the Division 1 Men's Basketball Championship between 2011 and 2024 on their delivery systems. The distributors, CBS and Turner Sports, will pay the NCAA members about $10.8 billion over the life of that contract. All the tournament games will be shown live across four national networks, beginning in 2010. CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting will help out on the NCAA's corporate marketing program.
Just how will CBS and Turner Sports pay the actual bill? Sumner Redstone's CBS has to hope that there will not be a deep recession anytime in the next 14 years which will scare advertisers away from the TV, because over-the-air TV has just one revenue source to cover the bills — sponsorship or marketing partners — while Turner Broadcasting (Time Warner) has a dual revenue stream, user fees and advertising.
Most of the money needed to pay off the cable/satellite TV bill will come from consumers. Although Time Warner will never give exact figures as to how much they charge consumers for TNT, TBS or truTV, those numbers are believed to be a dollar a subscriber for TNT, fifty cents for TBS and about a dime for the ratings-challenged truTV, which used to be the ratings-challenged Court TV.
Time Warner is actually footing the bill; with CBS paying Time Warner back as much as $670 million a year. CBS will show the Final Four until 2015 and then the over-the-air network, CBS and the dual revenue cable company Time Warner, will alternate coverage on an annual basis.
In the fall of 2006, Major League Baseball signed a seven-year agreement with Turner Broadcasting System, which gave TBS the exclusive rights to the National League Championship Series in 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2013 and the American League Championship Series in 2008, 2010 and 2012. TBS also was given the rights to all regular season tie-breaker games, all Division Series games and the All-Star Game Selection Show. In 2008, TBS was allowed to carry Major League Baseball games on 26 Sunday afternoons. Time Warner (TBS) has a local deal with the Atlanta Braves and has a piece of the New York regional sports cable channel, SNY, along with the Mets ownership and another cable company Comcast. The deal with Major League Baseball is estimated to be worth between $300 and 420 million.
Who do you think is paying for the programming?
Ted Turner? Of course not. He is not even at Turner anymore. Overall consumers might be paying more for Time Warner news-sports and entertainment than Disney's ESPN.
Disney has spent billions for National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and college sports contracts. ESPN just gave what is believed to be a 12-year, $1.86 billion contract to the Atlantic Coast Conference for the rights to college football and basketball games held in the conference. ESPN and the ESPN channels have the highest carriage fees in the business at over $4 a month per subscriber. While the big boys fight, the consumer gets no say unless the consumer decides to get rid of cable TV.
The cable industry has all sorts of anti-consumer protection thanks to the 1984 Cable TV Act passed by both bodies of Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. Cable networks can be bundled by the multiple systems operator and consumers cannot pick and choose what channel they want to purchase. The last pro-choice attempt that Congress made to help consumers took place in 2004. Georgia House member (Republican) Nathan Deal's proposed legislation that went nowhere.
Representative Deal had a very unusual coalition of support for his bill. The Concerned Women for America, along with the Parents Television Council, the Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America, petitioned Congress, asking for pro-choice when it comes to cable-television options and threw its weight behind the Video Programming Choice and Decency Act of 2004, which would have given all cable subscribers the right to pick and choose what programming they want.
Time Warner may want to "Roll Over or Get Tough" but before they start complaining about The Disney Company (and there is a laundry list of problems associated with Disney), they ought to be a little more honest about their accusations. Time Warner is as much a culprit in rising cable TV costs as anyone in the business.
Evan Weiner is an author, radio-TV commentator and speaker on "The Business of Sports" and can be reached at evanjweiner@yahoo.com