To see tonight's showdown with New England Patriots and the New York Jets, many New England fans will have to search for an outlet that gets the league-owned NFL Network, a cable channel that
only about 40% U.S. households receive.
Little has changed since the NFL moved eight regular-season games to its cable channel in 2006 and tried unsuccessfully to persuade Comcast
and Time Warner to pay to include the network in their basic package. Now the NFL is trying to get fans to pressure cable operators to pay to put the NFL Network on their systems. Since the Patriots
are the league's only team named for a region rather than a city, it gives the league an prime opportunity to try to stoke New Englanders' frustrations with their cable companies.
But Comcast counters that the NFL is unfairly pitting one group of Patriots fans against another. "The rest of the year they are the New England Patriots, but this week, they are being treated like
the Boston Patriots," says a Comcast rep.
advertisement
advertisement
Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »