The Triangle

Issue date: 11/30/07 Section: Money & Business

Media Credit: on Jenkins Fort Worth Star Telegram/MCT Dallas Cowboys team owner Jerry Jones, the chairman of the NFL Network, has been leading a crusade against big cable companies that refuse to carry the NFL Network. The television network carries eight games each year, which cable companies argue is why they do not include it in basic packages.

DALLAS - The NFL knew it had something special when its scheduling formula spit out a Packers-Cowboys matchup this season. While the league could never have anticipated they would rank as the top teams in the NFC, it did know the value of tradition and could document each team's enormous drawing power on national television.

So when the schedule maker divvied up 2007 games among the league's television partners, it decided the Packers-Cowboys would not go to Fox, the network of the NFC, or the prime-time packages on NBC or ESPN, a trio which anted up $2.41 billion in rights fees this season. Instead, the NFL looked in the mirror and delivered the game to its own fledgling NFL Network, which will deliver the game to only one-third of the country.

It's part of the league's plan to help transform an ugly duckling into a cash cow. "It's no accident we have Green Bay-Dallas," Jerry Jones, the recently appointed chairman of NFL Network, confirmed in an interview last week.

"And it's no accident that there are two Dallas Cowboys appearances in the network's eight games," added Jones, who doubles as the proud Cowboys owner.

The NFL hoped the promise of a Packers-Cowboys extravaganza in its second season of broadcasting games would ignite a run of viewers demanding their cable carriers offer the network. But a funny thing has happened to the most irresistible force in the sports universe. The NFL has run into an immovable object: big cable carriers.

Time Warner, Dallas' cable provider with more than 2.3 million subscribers across Texas, and Comcast, the nation's largest cable provider, have proven to be All-Pro run stoppers. Along with the likes of fellow cable giants, Cablevision and Charter, they have refused to yield to the league's demands to carry NFL Network on their basic digital tiers. Comcast does offer the network but on a sports tier, a cable no-man's land.

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