The offer for the New York area was for one free week of NFL Network programming from this Sunday to Dec. 30. That deal also includes the Dec. 29 Insight Bowl between Minnesota and Texas Tech. It does not include the Washington-New York Giants game on Dec. 30.
More correctly, there was never a deal to fall through. NFL Network claims that they offered Cablevision the same deal that Time Warner agreed to, but Cablevision denies it. It's natural to think Cablevision is lying, of course. Unless you're a Rutgers fan, this is a big "so what", since the Giants-Cowboys game will undoubtedly be on broadcast TV in New York anyway.
Well, after last night's epic NFC matchup I'm sure there will be protests and riots all day long until this situation gets resolved. If people miss another NFC cripple fight, things are going to get ugly.
The problem is that the league knows this, and will get bolder next year by putting better teams on the network. As I said weeks ago, this is a total nonissue for people in the NY area who want to watch Jets (and Giants) games, since those will be on broadcast TV. Actually, the perfect situation would be for them to put a Giants game at home on Thursday night. That way it would still be on in NY, but we could get better non-Jets games on Sunday, since they wouldn't be up against the Giants at home (and therefore not on TV, like this week's NE-Jax game). Sooner or later this issue will be resolved with both Time Warner and Cablevision, just like it was with YES and SNY. The fact is, the vast majority of fans really couldn't care less if they get the NFL Network (and all of the nonfootball fans REALLY couldn't care less). Both sides know this, so it's just a game of chicken.
The NFL network is an awesome channel in general, and especially around draft time. How hard is it to reach a compromise here? IDIOTS.
