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NFL Kicks Dirt at Comcast, Other Cable Operators
League Tells FCC that Cable Operators Favor Affiliated Networks
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 09/13/2007
Washington – The National Football League, which rakes in $3.7 billion a year in TV revenue alone, is accusing the cable industry of favoring channels it owns and discriminating against unaffiliated channels such as the NFL Network through less favorable economic terms and channel positioning.
“[Cable operators] commonly disadvantage independent services by forcing them to accept inferior compensation or channel placement – or both,” the NFL Network told the Federal Communications Commission in a Sept. 11 filing related to cable system carriage of independently owned program networks.
The NFL Network and some cable operators have been at loggerheads over the price and channel position of the fledging pigskin network. The clash began after NFL leaders decided to air a few games on their own cable network, and try to recover hundreds millions of dollars in lost TV revenue through NFL Network license fees charged to cable and satellite operators.
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