The NFL is being challenged concerning its practice of granting exclusivity to certain carriers or controlling the tier where cable operators can offer NFL programming.
Jeffrey Pash, NFL executive vp told the Senate Judiciary Committee "The centerpiece of the NFL's television policy is free, over-the-air broadcasting of NFL games, the best way to do so has been and continues to be through broadcast television."
Some of the major concerns were that the new TV deals, specifically the Thursday-Saturday game package will drive up the increase of cable costs. That and the exclusive deal that the NFL made with satellite TV to broadcast Sunday games.
When Pash was asked why the Sunday Ticket wasn't open to competitive bidding, he responded that the reason they didn't allow Comcast (CMCSA) to bid was because they refused to allow local broadcasters to air the games during the same time period.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., said his main concern was that their refusal to offer competitive bidding would drive up cable prices of those that had no interest in whether football was part of their package or not.
Pash responded by saying he didn't believe that the two issues were connected. Some of the senators vowed to continue putting the pressure on.
A lot of the problems associated with all of this are that while the cable companies under the program-access law, must provide their satellite competitors with programming that they generate, the satellite companies DirecTV (DTV) and EchoStar (DISH), on their part, don't have to. The law is considered the major reason by many on why there is even such a thing as a satellite TV industry in the first place.
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