Watchdog

Here is an example of the type of thing I can do with the blog that would be physically impossible in the newspaper. It’s a 1,900-word Q&A with NFL Network president Steve Bornstein – one of the most powerful people in sports TV - conducted at the network’s second annual “upfront’’ presentation to advertisers April 25 at the Hammerstein Ballroom on 34th Street. (The vast majority of questions were from me; a few were from the other three or four reporters present who managed to sneak a word in edgewise.) It’s long, obviously, but there is some good stuff in there about the network, the NFL and the cable distribution system itself. After I turned off the recorder I argued for another 10 minutes with Bornstein about the viability of a la carte cable programming. I’m glad I didn’t have to type any more quotes than this, though. I’m fast – as Long Islanders of a certain age surely will recall, I was a ninth grade typing prodigy at East Northport Junior High in 1974-75 – but 1,900 words were enough.

Q: What is your current feeling about the pace of distribution for the network?
A: Listen, it can’t happen fast enough as far as I’m concerned, but I’m very pleased with the distribution we’ve gotten to date. And more importantly, I think the consumers are happy with it. The ratings have exceeded our expectations, we’re having good dialogue with our non-carriers right now, and we’re having an even better dialogue with the guys who are carrying us. They like the product.

Q: Is there a key thing you need to solve to break through to the next level of distribution?
A: It’s not all that complicated. We want as much distribution as possible and that unfortunately costs more money, so it’s an economic issue and it’s a capacity issue for the people who are not distributing us. But it’s not that the product’s not strong. The product is very strong.

Q: What do you think of MLB’s maneuver in getting distributed in part by offering equity to DirecTV, Comcast, Time Warner and Cox?
A: I don’t know enough about it to have an intelligent comment about it. They seem happy with it. The more these networks are broadly distributed the better off we are. To me it’s two different things. They’re not launching for two more years and we’re already at 42 million [households] plus and growing. Any time networks get distribution to me it’s a pro-consumer circumstance and we’re all for it.

Q: If I’m a customer of a cable company that hasn’t signed on yet, will I get the NFL Network?
A: This is a three-way street. The consumer has to tell the distributor what they want. That’s my experience, and ultimately the consumer wins.

Q: I’m assuming you don’t intend to sell a piece of your network the way MLB did?
A: We don’t have any interest in doing that. A lot of people have been interested in our network but right now we’re still growing it and seeing how big we can make it.

Q: Jim Dolan said on the radio recently that he will not ever carry the NFL Network at its current price unless he gets access to NFL Sunday Ticket. How do you react to that?
A: I don’t negotiate in the press. I’d rather talk to Jim alone.

Q: What’s that like?
A: Jim’s a good guy. We go back a long way. He’s been a good friend of mine.

Q: Are Bryant Gumbel and Cris Collinsworth coming back as your booth team?
A: Absolutely.

Q: What were your impressions of Bryant’s first season and what does he have to do to improve?
A: It’s what we all need to do to get better. We put together a team both in front of the camera and behind the camera in breakneck speed. And I think we put a more than credible, excellent presentation out there. I would expect all of our game coverage to be enhanced, pre-game, halftime, the game itself, by all of our people because we’re one year into it. Everybody else starts in mid-year form. We had to pick up basically in less than one year’s notice. We put it all together with nine months’ notice and we now have the luxury of having a year to prepare, which will make everything better, from the talent to the graphics to the camera operators to the managers.

Q: How much does it hurt you in getting distribution that unlike a lot of these other channels you are not owned by a cable company or big media company that can use its leverage?
A: Look, first of all, I look at this differently than most of the media, including you, characterize it. This is a case of glass half full. I go back to the early days of ESPN when we were in 1½ million homes and everybody said it was insignificant and all the sports you wanted to watch were on at the time three television networks on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. I think we proved that conventional wisdom wrong, and I think we’re going to prove that this is what any new startup goes through. The fact of the matter is that it’s a remarkable circumstance that we were in more than 40 million homes in less than three years. It’s remarkable that the ownership had confidence to put their crown jewels, live NFL regular-season programming, on a new and at the time, untested medium. I look at that as nothing but a positive. Yeah, to go back to your question, we’re an independent programmer in a business that has a lot of integration issues. There are lots of currencies going on between big distributors and big programmers. We’re not without some of our own, but we’re not in the media business. The independent guy suffers a little from that, but I don’t need any benefits thrown for the NFL. We have must have programming and we’re putting a very compelling deal on the table. It’s not a particularly one-sided deal, there’s lots of currency, lots of value exchange. We’re giving the most valuable advertising inventory in the history of cable television: live NFL games. We cover 52 preseason games. We have all these replay games. It’s nothing but first class ad inventory, which is a very compelling part of the cable operators’ business. My sense of all this is that your expectations of instant success are unfounded. No one has ever done that. It took ESPN I think eight years to get to 30 million homes. We got to 40 in three years. It’s a different day and age, but we’re way ahead of my expectations. I didn’t think we’d be in 40 million homes for five or six years. I’m optimistic that the telephone companies will get real traction. Both of the major carriers distribute us on their most broadly penetrated tier. I think that’s real whereas a few years ago it might have been suspicious that they’d be meaningful in the media bundling business. So I think we have a lot of wind under our sails and we’re pretty optimistic.

Q: Is there a danger of expanded basic cable just getting too crowded?
A: No! It’s been asked and answered the past 30 years! There answer is no. Of course not. How can there be a limit? Should there only be three newspapers or 3,000 newspapers?

Q: But someone has to pay for this stuff.
A: Who?

Q: Ultimately the consumer.
A: Right. It’s survival of the fittest. I’m a capitalist. You guys are the same guys who said, ‘We don’t need 24-hour news! We don’t need 24-hour sports! We don’t need 24-hour music!’ Guess what: Each one of those is a viable product for a certain consumer and they’re all vibrant businesses. Now, all I’m suggesting is the most interesting programming, the most popular programming on this planet is the NFL and there is room for a 24-hour network devoted to it.

Q: If you’re a capitalist devoted to survival of the fittest, why shouldn’t it all be a la carte?
A: You’re asking me what business model works. Maybe that could work. But this is the one that has developed. There are a lot of economic studies, every one sponsored by our federal government, the FCC, that says it will cost more to the consumer, but maybe you’re right. But that doesn’t make it cheaper. It’s just a different model. If I could just buy the TV critic reviews in Newsday and the Post that might be a better model for me because that’s what I’m interested in. I’m not really interested in horse racing, but guess what? That model doesn’t exist . . . for a reason.

Q: Sitting here in April do you like this year’s schedule more than you did last year?
A: I always do, but I’m an old programmer. I come to my upfront I think I’ve got the top 10 shows every time. I’m a believer. I’m not always proved right, but when I was running ABC I thought we’d be No. 1 every year because I loved all those shows. Clearly it is a strong schedule, but I’ve given up trying to figure out who’s going to be really hot 13 weeks into the schedule. If there’s anything we’ve learned it’s that you can’t predict. That’s one of the reasons we went to flexible scheduling on NBC.

Q: How do the NFL owners treat you?
A: They love us! The amount of confidence they’ve shown in us, and the resources they’ve allowed us to employ is, well, they’re the best owners in the world, and I’ve worked for a bunch of media companies. These guys are great. They put the money on the screen. They allow us to really do our best work. I don’t know if you watch our network but day one to today it’s getting better every day and we have never once been told don’t spend that kind of money. We put a good quality product on there. When Paul Tagliabue said he wanted to do it, I told him you have to spend the money, you can’t put it together on the cheap, you have to put it on the screen. To his credit and their credit, and to Roger [Goodell], who was an even bigger supporter than Paul from the get-go, they’ve been nothing but supportive.

Q: Do they have the patience for the peaks and valleys of TV negotiation?
A: You guys don’t help me. Because you guys are always looking for the negative as opposed to saying this is the fastest growing network ever, aren’t these guys wonderful? If you owned Seinfeld you would be doing 24/7 programming on Seinfeld. We’re more popular than Seinfeld. These guys have been fabulous. I mean: They put games on! That’s the biggest compliment they can pay. That’s confidence in my book.

Q: Are you a competitor of ESPN or a partner ?
A: Look, in a perfect world, if I was God there would be one television network and it would be the NFL Network. There wouldn’t be anything else. So to the degree we all eat, yeah, we all are competing. But we look at ourselves as a complement to our partners. I promote Monday Night Football. I promote Sunday Night Football. I promote football. I want ESPN to cover the draft. I just want to cover the draft. So to the degree we promote the sport that all of my four partners have made a major investment in, it’s good news and that’s complementary and not in opposition. But I do have 650 advertisers here. The good news is there is a limited amount of NFL inventory. We are a limited player in a big sea. We’re just a little minnow. The NFL Network is just a little minnow, seriously. We’re just trying to eke out a living in a cruel, hostile world. We just want to put food on our players’ and cheerleaders’ tables.

Q: A hundred years ago cycling was one of the biggest sports in the country, and later things like boxing and horse racing and such had their moments. Do you think the NFL still will be the biggest sport in this country in 20 years, 30 years, 100 years?
A: It’s going to be football. A hundred years from now, I don’t see that far out, but 20 years from now it will be. Take my word for it.