NFL Meetings : 3-Year, $1.4 Billion TV Deal Is Approved

So pleased with their pay cut were the National Football League owners that they knocked off poolside a day early and held an extraordinary session Sunday morning so they could vote on their new TV package.

Faster than you could say “Let’s party,” it passed, 28-0. After months of ominous hints, the owners accepted their 3.3% cut--from $17.5 million per team last season to just under $17 million next--as the best possible news.

Of course, they had to give up their proud estate as the last league televising only over-the-air and sell eight Sunday night games to a cable network, ESPN.

Commissioner Pete Rozelle and his negotiating sidekick, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell, regretted the new development at length in the post-approval press conference, but there doesn’t seem to have been a great gnashing of teeth among the owners. For the $47 million a year that ESPN reportedly will pay, whose image can’t stand a little tarnish?

“I think, based on the sentiment from the member clubs, the general tenor is that we are pleased,” Modell said.

“If you want to call it dodging a bullet, I would say that we were able to preserve the bulk of our revenues despite a declining market,” Modell said. “That’s a cleaner way than saying dodging a bullet. But I can’t quarrel with you.

“Gene Klein, my former colleague (former owner of the San Diego Chargers and an owner of a movie distribution company) had predicted we would take a 15% cut. So this wasn’t a bullet but a dart.

“At one time (during negotiations), there was a distressing evening that Pete Rozelle and I had,” Modell said, “because it was a substantial reduction from what it was in ’86 and what it ended up being for ’87.”

What did they do that evening?

“Cried.”

If the old $2.1 billion contract was averaged out over its five years, it would be smaller than the the new one--$1.438 billion for three years. The old contract, however, called for escalating payments that reached $493 million in its final year. This one calls for three years at $479 million each year.

The old contract was negotiated after the ’81 season, in which the NFL had its highest TV ratings before or since. After that came the strike and the first impact of cable TV, which resulted in generally lower ratings and a softer advertising market.

And there were new network owners.

“GE bought RCA (the parent company of NBC),” Modell said. “(Lawrence) Tisch and Loew’s bought CBS and Capital Cities took over ABC. With a different ethic and a different objective. . . . You need only to look at what they’re doing to their news divisions--that’s in the papers every day--to realize they have some problems.”

Despite falling ratings, network problems, dark hints and intense negotiations (Modell says there were 75 meetings), this wasn’t the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

An NBC source says the negotiations weren’t difficult, that everyone knew pretty much what was happening. The source says that NBC came in with a figure that was accepted, that CBS and ABC came in with numbers that the NFL thought were low and were then raised to everyone’s satisfaction.

If the networks were getting some relief, there was no shortage of cable bidders to help make it up. ESPN won out over HBO, USA and a consortium of independents which wanted to become the Cable Football Network.

Of course, ESPN is also owned by bottom-line oriented Cap Cities, which is, in effect, paying roughly the same price for NFL football but taking a portion of the money from a different corporate pocket. This will produce more profit at ABC and greater prestige for ESPN.

“They’re sports-oriented,” Rozelle said of ESPN’s winning bid. “They have 41 million homes. And they bid the most.”

From Bristol, Conn., ESPN President Bill Grimes called it “the most significant sports agreement in cable television history.”

Notes

If, say, the Rams play a Sunday night game at New England, the game will be televised back to Los Angeles on both ESPN and an over-the-air channel that buys the ESPN telecast. ESPN can sell the game to any local station. . . . Art Modell said the ESPN games will be “of Monday night quality.” . . . The standing blackout rules will apply to ESPN. A home game can only be televised if it’s sold out 72 hours in advance. . . . ESPN will carry four exhibition games plus the Pro Bowl. Its regular-season schedule will start on the ninth week of the season. . . . Leaving the package are ABC’s Thursday night games. Coaches, who hated the three-day week to prepare, should be delighted.

Times staff writer Larry Stewart contributed to this story.