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NFL Caves; Pats Fans Clinch Broadcast VictoryBy Tammy Daniels - December 26, 2007
NORTH ADAMS - Bowing to pressure from fans and lawmakers, the National Football League has decided to broadcast Saturday's New England Patriots game to a wider audience.
The Patriots are expected to end the season with a unbeaten record. If they're the victors in Saturday's showdown with the New York Giants, they'll finish up 16-0, the first team to do so since the Miami Dolphins in 1972.
In what The Associated Press described as "a major concession," the league announced Wednesday that the NFL Network game will be simulcast on NBC and CBS.
It will be the first three-network simulcast in NFL history and the first of any NFL game since the first Super Bowl in 1967, according to The AP report.
The game was to be aired only over the fledgling NFL Network and in the Boston metro area over WCVB-TV Channel 5. That had fans without access to the channels up in arms.
A number of lawmakers, including U.S. Sens. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., called on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to be more flexible in scheduling the broadcast to allow more fans to see the game.
Kerry estimated the game would be blacked out for some 250,000 fans in Western Mass. Leahy took Goodell to task for not understanding New England, not just Boston, was the team's primary market.
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Kerry's Complaint
According to league rules, games can only be shown on local stations in teams' primary markets. WCVB-TV had bid for the rights to show the Pats last game of the regular season, but station officials said last week that did not include areas outside the metro area.
Time Warner Cable of Albany, N.Y., which covers the Berkshires, did not immediately return a phone call on Wednesday on whether the game would be available on Channel 5 here.
The NFL and the cable companies have been at loggerheads over how the new network would be carried. While it's available in some satellite TV sports packages, Time Warner does not carry it and Comcast offers it as part of a higher-tier package.
Goodell had rejected a requests to simulcast the game on the broadcast networks; Kerry and Leahy threatened to call for Senate hearings about the proliferation of premium sports networks and anti-trust issues.
"We have taken this extraordinary step because it is in the best interest of our fans," Goodell said in a statement. "What we have seen for the past year is a very strong consumer demand for NFL Network. We appreciate CBS and NBC delivering the NFL Network telecast on Saturday night to the broad audience that deserves to see this potentially historic game. Our commitment to the NFL Network is stronger than ever." |
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