• Mediaweek, Tuesday, April 29, 2008 10:45 AM

Although its distribution fell from 42 million homes to 34 million due to disputes with Comcast and EchoStar, the NFL Network's first-quarter household jumped 25% in total daytime and 17% in prime over the same period in 2007. And numbers for its flagship 7 p.m. "NFL Total Access" rose 5%. Media buyers in attendance at its recent upfront presentation were impressed -- especially as those rating came outside of fourth quarter, when the channel has eight regular-season, prime-time NFL games.

"Do we wish they were in more homes? Yes," says one buyer. "But the NFL is the highest-rated sport, and all NFL content is first-class. We want to see the network grow, so we'll recommend our clients buy advertising on it."

The goal of this year's NFL upfront presentation was to showcase the growth of NFL.com, which the league brought in-house last year. It's hoping the advertisers that took a pass last year, wanting to see how successful it would be with redesigning and adding content to our Web site, will dive in.

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