Couldn't believe it! The NFL Network channel, on Charter cable, abruptly went off the air on Monday here in Central Mass. This channel(316) was part of Charter's sports tier package that includes FSC, FSE, ESPN News along with 6-7 other sports channels. An on-screen explanation states: "Due to declining demand, the NFL Network and NFL On Demand will be discontinued as of Monday". I would not have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself. You would think that of all the sports on TV, the NFL Channel would be the last to go. Maybe we are starting to take FSC for granted. I think we are lucky and should be very thankful to the Fox Network for giving us a full-time soccer channel.
Due to declining demand... Hmmm, since it is a part of a package with other channels, who is to say it's not the other channels whose demand is declining? Just playing devil's advocate for A La Carte programming The problem with NFL TV is that they don't get ANY of the live games. I'm not an NFL fan but even if I were, I don't think NFL TV would be very useful when ESPN and other networks give you about all the coverage you can stand.
I've watched a fair amount of NFL network. It's a nice niche channel for a rabid fanbase. I found myself watching it in off-peak times: around Draft time, in the pre-season. This is a pissing match between the NFL and Charter. They want it moved off of a digital tier. When Charter wouldn't do it, they pulled it from their cable systems. This was initiated by the NFL Network, not Charter.
NFL Network is pretty cool, actually. The punditry is a bit more illuminating than what you get on the pregame yukfests on Fox, CBS and ESPN, and the interviews are usually amusing. Not bad stuff, especially considering it could've been just a 24/7 regurgitation of NFL Films outtakes.
IMHO, NFL Channel is quite lame. It just runs the stuff ESPN and Fox won't (NFL Europe, NFL Films stuff, etc.). The real football channels are Galavision, Gol TV, and FSC.
Indeed. When the NFL announced that they were going to be doing it, I thought that it was going to be like NBA TV, which is pretty lame (even if they do show a couple of live games a week). However, NFL Network's original content is very well done and more than makes up for the fact that they don't show any live regular-season NFL games.
The NFL channel is exactly what I am looking for. In the past few years, I've been out of the country during playoff times. Thus I've missed a good number of playoff games since the 2002-03 season, including the Giants/49ers bad-snap game, the Panthers/Rams OT game, the Seahawks/Packers OT game... The NFL Network is the only place I could watch these games now in 2005, even in a condensed version (1 hour). This is the ultimate niche channel for NFL diehards.