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Touchdown!
Starting tomorrow there’ll be even more football — if that’s possible — on the TV screens of New York’s pigskin-obsessed fans.
Time Warner Cable reached a blockbuster, multi-year deal to carry the NFL Network and its NFL Red Zone channel, officials announced.
That means the 12 million Time Warner customers who get “digital basic” — the lowest tier of service — will get to see the remaining 11 Thursday and Saturday night games to be aired by the NFLN.
The next NFLN game is the Cleveland Browns-Baltimore Ravens game on Sept. 27.
It also means that on Sunday afternoons they can watch every touchdown and every-inside-the-20-yard line play — in every game — on the Red Zone.
In case you want to hunt for them, NFL Network will be on Channel 176 (Standard Definition) and Channel 462 (High Definition).
NFL RedZone will be Channel 177 (Standard Definition) and Channel 463 (High Definition).
The NFL, which sells broadcast rights for Sunday games to Fox, CBS and NBC — plus Monday Night Football on ESPN — launched its own channel nine years ago.
But the league was blitzed by cable system indifference as many systems decided not to offer the NFL-owned network.
Over the years, the resistence faded as football added to its standing as the most popular TV programming in the country. The NFL also added games to its NFLN schedule.
Time Warner Cable came under heavier pressure to add it after Cablevision, another perennial holdout, added NFL Network in mid-August.
The expansion of the Thursday night schedule made NFL Network more desirable and helped seal the Time Warner Cable agreement, a source said.
Under the deal, TWC will pay the NFL Network 80 to 90 cents per household per month, sources said.
That could affect football haters as well as football fans, if it’s passed on to all “digital basic” customers. Red Zone is a separate sports tier that costs $5.95 a month in New York.
NFL Network is a 24/7 operation that features 13 prime-time games, as well as every preseason game, the Senior Bowl and other goodies for the pigskin-obsessed.
NFL Network President and CEO Steve Bornstein said he was happy to work with TWC and “bring fans football 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”
TWC, the nation’s second-largest cable provider, was the last major system to ink a carriage deal with Commissioner Roger Goodell’s league.
Bright House Networks, the nation’s sixth-largest cable provider, also reached agreement yesterday to carry NFL Network and RedZone.
The NFL has been eager to seal the deal because it extends the league’s presence in the New York and Los Angeles markets.
Goodell expressed annoyance earlier this month on the way negotiations had dragged on. “We’ve made it clear to Time Warner that we’ll do a market-rate deal and we’ll be as patient as we need to be,” he said. “We think it’s in the best interest of their customers, but that’s their decision, ultimately.”