Whether Jones and the league are having any success depends on who you talk to.
Appearing on WIP's "Morning Show" yesterday, Comcast executive vice president David Cohen said the cable giant has "experienced virtually no pushback" from their customers over their decision to remove NFLN from its digital package, where it was last year, and put it on a sports tier, where viewers now have to pay an additional $5 per month to get it.
"Jerry Jones is out there almost in near-hysteria about the NFL Network," Cohen said. "I think they're baffled that there hasn't been a fan uprising to be able to get these games."
Jones said it kind of depends on what your definition of a fan uprising is. He said he has spoken to dozens of regional associates of both Comcast and Time Warner who have acknowledged that they are losing "serious subscriptions" to satellite suppliers.
"Look at Comcast's stock," Jones told the Daily News yesterday in an interview from his plane. "It's gone down because of the subscriptions they've lost. If they're saying they're just losing them because of competition, then the people are probably going to satellite or some other form that does carry the NFL Network.
"They're going to have to be shown that we're a difference-maker."
Cohen told WIP that Comcast put NFLN on a sports tier so that "the vast majority of people who don't want to see those eight extra NFL games, their cable bills won't go up and don't have to go up as a result of the existence of the NFL Network."
That's touching and there's probably even a little bit of truth to it. But there's a bigger motivation at work here than that. It's the "Sunday Ticket" package. Comcast and Time Warner want it. The NFL doesn't want to give it to them.
