Cablevision and the National Football League on Thursday announced a multi-year deal that puts the NFL Network and the NFL RedZone channel on the Long Island-based cable operator's television lineup for the first time.
Competitors DirecTV and Verizon FiOS already carry the stations, which broadcast all sorts of football-related programming, including regular season Thursday night games.
NFL Network will be available in both standard-definition and HD for customers who subscribe to iO Preferred, iO Silver, iO Gold or the iO Sports & Entertainment Pak. NFL RedZone, which airs on Sundays throughout the regular season, will be offered in both standard-definition and HD as part of the iO Sports & Entertainment Pak, which is now included in the new iO Gold package.
"We know there is significant interest in the NFL Network and NFL RedZone among our Optimum TV customers, and are pleased to have worked productively with the NFL to offer both channels in time for the upcoming season, and for years to come," Mac Budill, Cablevision's executive vice president of programming, said in a statement.
Both Verizon and DirecTV have used the NFL Network as a way to woo sports fans to their services. DirecTV still has one advantage over both Verizon and Cablevision - the satellite provider is the only one of the three offering NFL Sunday Ticket, which allows fans to watch every regular season game.
I called on a Saturday had a new box by the Monday .
"Consumer groups said...that Verizion was further giving up on FiOS and yielding the home broadband market to cable." (AP/Newsday 8/17)
One, from Derek Turner, research director at Free Press, (But consumer advocates said the concessions did not ease their concerns that the deal would hurt competition by giving consumers fewer choices for Internet service.) "By allowing Verizon and cable companies to sell one anothers' service instead of competing, they could charge consumers higher prices". "We have a serious competition problem in our broadband and wireless markets, and this deal only serves to exacerbate this problem," Turner said. Also from Huff Post Tech: "Michael Calabrese, a director of the Wireless Future Project at the New America Foundation, said the deal would also reduce those companies' incentives to upgrade their networks to faster speeds. 'Five years from now, people who don’t live in the premium markets will have the same broadband they have today and no better because there’s no competitive pressures to upgrade quality,' he said." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/17/verizon-cable-company_n_1799157.html?utm_hp_ref=technology
The cable deal still needs approval from the Federal Communications Commission, which is expected to gives its OK
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20120817,0,2670681.column