Sports fans to pay ransom for games held hostage
All right, everyone, before Comcast basic-cable subscribers and other unfortunates who missed the Packers-Cowboys game get all anxious about next week's Bears-Redskins tilt, also on the NFL Network on Thursday night, remember that it will also air locally on WPWR Channel 50.
So come in off the ledge, lift the face flap on your big, furry Bears hat and take a deep breath. You'll be able to see the game. In fact, if you've got a decent set of rabbit ears on your TV, you won't even need to be a cable or satellite subscriber. It's totally free.
But this brings up the need to clarify a few issues in the battle between cable and satellite systems and sports channels like the NFL and Big Ten networks.
First, these sports players are absolutely trying to create something of their own out of nothing, and to that end they are absolutely holding games hostage in order to get fans to complain to their cable and satellite systems about adding the channels.
Nobody forced the NFL or the Big Ten to create their own networks. The lucrative TV deals they already had with the major broadcast networks and top cable channels weren't good enough. They wanted to create their own channel to make their own money, and my belief is both the NFLN and BTN are the first steps toward pay TV for sports.
It's a long way down the road, but it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to believe that, if these channels get powerful enough, they can eliminate the cable-satellite middleman and start charging viewers directly to watch them. They're already eliminating the network middleman by squeezing out the major networks and ESPN.
The NFL Network is using a carrot-and-stick approach. It demands exclusivity on out-of-town games, but when push comes to shove with local fans, it puts the local games on broadcast by farming them out to stations like Channel 50. That way, it can plead that it wants to give games to fans, it's just those nasty cable companies that are holding things up.
"In the market, it was an open bid process by the NFL Network, and we were very aggressive," said Pat Mullen, general manager of both Fox-owned Channel 50 and WFLD Channel 32. "It's the highest-rated sports franchise in the market."
The Big Ten Network, on the other hand, just uses a stick. And it uses viewers as a beast of burden by whipping them to complain to get the BTN added to cable and satellite systems.
Not that cable and satellite are innocent in all this. Comcast is absolutely using the NFLN and BTN to create demand for a sports tier at an added $7 or so a month by tossing them in with a bunch of other sports networks no one but a letterman's mother would possibly want to watch, like Fox College Sports and CSTV. Comcast is holding the games hostage, too.
And who pays the ransom? One way or another, we all do, my friend, whether in increased fees passing on the about a dollar-a-subscriber-a-month fees the NFLN and BTN charge, or by that added sports-tier fee.
That's why I've said all along, these sports networks have to be stopped -- or at least reined in -- now, before they get too powerful. And the only way to do that is to just say no. It's hard, I know. But for every subscriber to a cable TV sports tier or the NFL Network or the Big Ten Network or, worst of all, Sunday Ticket, it brings us all closer to pay TV for all sports.
It might be a doomsday scenario. But in 15 or 20 years or -- the way things are going in electronic media -- 10 years from now, don't say I didn't warn you.
In the air
Remotely interesting: WPWR Channel 50 will do pre- and postgame shows for Thursday's Bears game, starting at 6:30 p.m.. and borrowing WFLD Channel 32 sports anchors Corey McPherrin and Jill Carlson, who will do a live remote from Joe's Bar, 940 W. Weed St., Chicago. … Fox Sports airs the "BCS Selection Show" at 7 p.m. Sunday on Channel 32.
ESPN Zone is looking for contestants in its annual New Year's Day Ultimate Couch Potato contest, won the last two years by Lombard's Jason Pisarik, who watched sports for 40 hours straight a year ago. Send an e-mail of 200 words or less describing how "you have what it takes" to sit for days watching sports on TV to couchpotato@espnzone.com by midnight Dec. 14.
End of the dial: Today is the last day for baseball fans to vote for finalists in the Ford C. Frick Award -- the broadcasters' honor at the Hall of Fame -- at baseballhall.org. Ten finalists will be announced Wednesday, three chosen from fan balloting.
Dan McNeil has returned revitalized from back surgery on his WMVP 1000-AM afternoon show, more lively than ever with co-hosts John Jurkovic and Harry Teinowitz.
-- Ted Cox