Not all NFL games are seen on television.  Depending on where you live, if you don’t have the NFL Network , you aren’t going to see some games. If the seats aren’t sold out on a game aired on the NFL Network, then a game cannot be shown on local broadcasting Networks.  This was the case of Thursday nights game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Indianapolis Colts.

If Time Warner and the NFL Network don’t come to terms, will the Jaguars move to a new location?

Watch Bloomberg’s Michele Steele report on the NFL Network and it’s restricted availability due to unresolved pricing issues with some cable companies.

NFL Network

It was fluky enough for two N.F.L. teams to be undefeated this late in the season, but even more fluky that the Indianapolis Colts’ and the New Orleans Saints’ Week 15 games were scheduled to be shown within three days on the NFL Network.

The Colts beat the Jaguars, 35-31, on Thursday night, and improved to 14-0. The Saints will face the Cowboys on Saturday night.

“We’re very excited,” said Steve Bornstein, the NFL Network’s president. “It gives us great visibility.”

The serendipitous scheduling is good for the league’s channel, which carries eight prime-time games a season and a raft of other league-oriented programming. But it has also battled to be seen. The network has squabbled with cable systems, most notably with Comcast; that long legal battle ended in a settlement last May that increased its availability to a shade over 55 million homes that are served by cable, satellite and telephone companies.

But even at that level of subscribers, its most ever, the NFL Network still lacks the much broader exposure of CBS,ESPN, NBC, or Fox, the league’s other TV partners.

Which brings us back to December 2007, when the New England Patriots were 15-0 and looking to complete their undefeated season against the Giants. There was enormous clamor from fans, and even Congress, that a history-making game could be seen in a universe of 43 million homes. Eventually, NBC and CBS entered to simulcast it.

The result: 34.5 million viewers watched the Patriots win, 13 percent of them from NFL Network homes. A game as important as that one showed the power of broadcast TV. Together, NBC and CBS had 29 million viewers.

No NFL Network game has attracted more than the 12.1 million for a Packers-Cowboys game in 2007.

Bornstein noted the primary difference between the Giants-Patriots broadcast and the Saints’ and Colts’ games.

“It wasn’t only a potentially, and ultimately, a terrific game, but it was the New England Patriots going for an unprecedented undefeated season,” he said. “But this is not the end of the season.”

But that distinction did not deter the network from buying newspaper ads to market the games and tweak its foes. The ad that ran Thursday in The New York Times said: “Attention Time Warner and Cablevision Customers: You May Be Denied Two Teams Chasing the Perfect Season.”

The tagline added: “Two Nights. Two Undefeated Teams. One Network.”

That tactic made it clear that the two games were never destined for a broadcast network simulcast. But as is the practice regarding N.F.L. games on cable, viewers in the TV markets of the four participating teams will be able to see games on local broadcast stations if they do not get the NFL Network.

Despite the NFL Network’s growth — and the introduction of the deservedly heralded Red Zone Channel to all cable and satellite subscribers — it is still hindered by not being available in many more homes.

It would benefit greatly from deals with Time Warner and Cablevision, which together serve 17 million cable homes nationwide, more than 4 million of them in the New York market.

But both cable operators, along with a third, Charter, form the axis of the unwilling.

“We’ve had negotiations with Time Warner Cable, and we’re not going to get a deal this year,” Bornstein said. “We’d love to have Cablevision as a distributor, but they’ve elected not to.”

Maureen Huff, a spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable, said the cost of carrying the channel is too expensive.

“We think it’s an excessive amount of money for eight out-of-market games,” she said. All other N.F.L. games are available on existing networks without adding the league’s channel, she said.

Time Warner is seeking its customers’ guidance about what to do about networks raising what they are charging the big cable operator. On its Web site, the company says, “The networks shouldn’t be in the driver’s seat on what you watch and how much you pay,” then asks if it should “Roll Over” or “Get Tough.”

The loaded choice has already yielded a landslide for “Get Tough” from more than 400,000 voters.

Huff said the online plebiscite is “not about any one network, station or provider.”

But it is not difficult to see it as a way for Time Warner to justify its position against paying what the NFL Network has demanded even if the polling is more likely part of its war with Fox’s broadcast and cable networks.

“We’re innovative, and we’ve been well-received,” Bornstein said. “Four of the top five distributors get it and are happy. Time Warner’s the only one who doesn’t get it.”

by Richard Sandomir, The New York Times

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