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Oct 24 2007 2:38PM EDT

NFL Admits Fewer Homes Are Getting the NFL Network

The National Football League has acknowledged its NFL Network isn't quite reaching its intending audience. In fact, it is in 15 million fewer homes today than the league had projected when it launched the channel in November 2003.

Commissioner Roger Goodell made the disclosure alongside Dallas Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones, new chairman of the NFL Network committee, marking the first time the league has publicly acknowledged the number of homes the channel is in.

The channel carries eight late-season games in addition to NFL shoulder programs and other live events. "We are really committed as an ownership, really committed, with a lot of energy to make this network work," Jones said. "It is going to work."

Goodell said the NFL had expected 50 million households by now, but is instead in 35 million homes, most of them through satellite providers. Still, Jones said the network is profitable, and it was not fair to compare its financial success with the $350 million annually the league reportedly turned down from Comcast to form its own network.

Jones said the league is "building an asset, and not so focused on the dollars and cents."

Sure they're not focused on dollars and cents.

Jones also said that the 32 NFL teams would take a more active role in lobbying consumers to pressure Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision to put the channel on their digital basic packages.

Good luck with that. If cable companies aren't willing to budge when it comes to the money machine that is the NFL, they won't budge at all.


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