Word: nfl
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...networks essentially paid double the previous contract for programming that is steadily losing viewership. NFL ratings have tumbled about 33% since their peak in the early 1980s. And overall network viewership continues to dwindle: the prime-time ratings on ABC, CBS and NBC have fallen 47% over the same period. "What this shows you is that it's not football that is the draw," says Porter Bibb, a media analyst with Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co., "but that the networks are struggling for survival...
...NFL, whose owners routinely hold up municipalities for new stadium deals--or bolt town in the middle of the night for more remunerative burgs--the $17.6 billion is just another example of its ability to play hardball. Each team will get a windfall of about $75 million a team per season, although much of that will go into players' salaries. After five years the NFL can renegotiate for even higher payoffs...
None of this money would have been forthcoming had it not been for that gridiron great (at least in the eyes of NFL owners) Rupert Murdoch. The Australian-born boss of News Corp. has reordered the economics of sports. Murdoch views sports not as mere programming but as the foundation for establishing entire television (Fox) and satellite (British Sky Broadcasting) networks. From this perspective, it makes sense to pay more for the NFL than you can get back in advertising revenues. Murdoch fired that thunderbolt in 1994, paying $1.58 billion for the NFC package, 49% more than CBS had been...
...experience demonstrates that if having the NFL is expensive, not having it is even more so. After CBS lost football, several of its affiliates jumped ship, weakening the network's local-station base. And building a new series into a hit became more difficult because the networks use sports to flog their other shows endlessly. Without a football lead-in, 60 Minutes' audience share shrank from 30% to 22%. CBS eventually sank to third place. With football, the network, which owns stations in seven AFC markets, insisted it would break even by selling more...
...season," says Pilson. For the stations, that can mean an additional $100 million a year. That's good enough even for a bottom-line zealot like Mel Karmazin, chairman of the CBS Station Group. Said he: "We know better than anybody else what it's like to have the NFL and what it's like not to have the NFL. And it sure as hell is a whole lot better to have the NFL...