Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 1, 1994 TAG: 9409010036
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Next Sunday, across America in the early afternoon, phones will ring at the 200-plus CBS Television Network affiliates. The callers will have a similar question:
``Where's the [expletive] NFL?''
The answer, of course, is the Fox Network, which enabled NFL owners to drastically improve their bottom line by bidding $1.58 billion for four seasons of NFC games. Viewers become accustomed to finding what they've watched for years without channel-surfing, so this switch to Fox will hit some armchair quarterbacks like a blind-side blitz.
After almost four decades with the league, CBS will spend its Sundays airing primarily movies, figure skating and golf. CBS began airing NFL games in 1958, and in '62 paid a then-staggering $28.2 million for a two-year contract for exclusive rights. That was the first year every NFL team was guaranteed television exposure. Each of the NFL teams reaped $1 million per year. Last season, each club - the league having doubled to 28 franchises - received almost $40 million.
As Fox proved to CBS, times change. However, if viewers will be changing channels to watch the Cowboys, 49ers and Redskins (on Fox 14 times this season), much of what they see still will look very familiar.
It's still the NFL. Fox's lead announcing team is Pat Summerall and John Madden, who are not the only former CBSers who have moved to the network of Bart Simpson and Heather Locklear. The No.2 booth duo is Dick Stockton and Matt Millen. Terry Bradshaw has switched studios, too. And the lead production team from CBS' NFL days - producer Bob Stenner and director Sandy Grossman - still will be calling the shots while Summerall and Madden call the plays.
That said, the game within the game figures to look different at times on Fox, starting with the score and clock insert that will remain on screen during the entire game. It's a new generation of NFL coverage, and not just because sons of well-known broadcasting fathers - Kenny Albert (Marv), Thom Brennaman (Marty) and Joe Buck (Jack) - will be working play-by-play.
The primary game each week, called by Summerall and Madden, will be covered by 12 cameras and eight tape machines. That means viewers will see the kind of coverage made familiar by ABC's ``Monday Night Football.'' The Stockton-Millen team will have eight cameras and six tape machines. The history of NFL regional coverage on Sundays has been six cameras on most games.
Where Fox's entrance really makes a difference, however, is in club revenues. Until Fox upped the ante, the NFL figured it would struggle to get an increase in telecast rights from the four-year contracts that expired after last season with five networks. Fox's $1.58 billion payment is a 49 percent increase on the $1.06 billion CBS paid from 1990-93.
To keep AFC Sunday afternoon rights, NBC paid 15 percent more, or $880 million, while ABC starts its 25th season of ``Monday Night Football'' after only a 2 percent hike to the NFL, to $925 million. To renew its cable contracts, ESPN paid $524 million and TNT $496 million, rises of 17 and 11 percent in rights fees, respectively.
The NFC move to Fox isn't the only major change in the way the NFL delivers its telecast this season. There's also the introduction of ``NFL Sunday Ticket,'' for satellite-dish owners, as the league begins encrypting the signals of Sunday regional games on NBC and Fox and selling season packages.
The NFL decision was rooted in its desire to protect its regional delivery into each market, as some commercial establishments with multiple dishes were delivering several games to viewers. Now, a sports bar can openly market an NFL Sunday, and home viewers who want to see a team outside its home market will have to pay for it.
The games are not sold on a week-to-week, pay-per-view basis. A home dish owner may purchase the season package of 17 Sundays for $139. The cost to sports bars and restaurants varies and is based on the establishment's fire-code capacity. For instance, a bar with a capacity of 1-100 pays $699, or one with 101-200 capacity pays $1,299 for the season.
So, a Green Bay fan in Roanoke who wants to see the Packers rather than the Redskins can do that, if he has a dish or an accommodating watering hole. If the ``Sunday Ticket'' concept works - the NFL has been reluctant to release figures on subscribers, only saying the concept is ``doing well'' - the speculation about the league's pay-per-view future may lessen.
There is one catch, however. Blacked-out home games in a market still will not be available to dish owners in the local blackout area, just as the telecast is not aired via over-the-air stations.
There are a few other changes in the NFL on TV this season. O.J. Simpson, of course, isn't in NBC's studio, where Greg Gumbel and Ahmad Rashad are teaming as the ``NFL Live'' host team. Analyst Randy Cross moves from CBS to NBC, the Pro Bowl switches from ESPN to ABC and Brent Musburger steps in as halftime host for ``Monday Night Football,'' which in its 25th season is the longest-running network prime-time sports series in TV history.
by CNB