NFL, Networks Say Outcry Won’t Halt Scrambling

Officials for the NFL and the major television networks said Thursday that they were stunned by the response of sports-bar owners angered over the scrambling of NFL telecasts.

But league and network officials also said that, despite the national outcry, scrambling would not be reversed and no option to “de-scramble” would be made available.

“This story has been picked up all over America, and indeed, the response has been surprising . . . overwhelming,” said Val Pinchbeck, the NFL’s vice president in charge of broadcasting. “But we’re not going to change what we started. We and the networks agreed we would move toward scrambling, and that we have done.”

Pinchbeck said National Football Conference games carried on CBS would be “fully scrambled” by the start of the season Sept. 9. He said scrambling of NBC telecasts involving the American Football Conference would be complete “at least by mid-season.”

Unlike Home Box Office, ESPN, TNT and cable outlets offering “de-scrambling” packages, in which subscribers buy a decoder and also pay a fee, the NFL plans no such option “at any point in the future,” Pinchbeck said, adding that only local affiliates would have the ability to receive network games.

Sports-bar owners have in the past attracted customers with rooting interests in NFL teams in other parts of the country by showing games not available through local affiliates.

In San Diego, Norman Lebovitz, the owner of Sluggo’s, a family-oriented restaurant that prides itself on its Chicago sports theme, said he had been named chairman of a Southern California organization called the Assn. for Sports Fans’ Rights. The group held its first meeting in Hillcrest Monday night, and more than 40 people--including eight lawyers--attended.

Lebovitz said his group had joined forces with Sports Fans of America, a Miami-based organization that has waged war in the courtroom over the showing of Dolphins games “blacked out” in Southern Florida.

“We’ve heard from organizations in Philadelphia, Phoenix, Los Angeles, New Orleans, San Francisco . . . These people are outraged,” said Lebovitz, who operates Sluggo’s in three San Diego locations and has traditionally drawn large crowds for telecasts of regional NFL games involving the Bears. “I’m talking to hundreds who represent thousands. It seems grass-roots America is taking this as a personal offense.”

Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) said he had heard from constituents outraged over the NFL’s decision. As a member of the House Committee of Energy and Commerce, Bates said he planned to ask the subcommittee on telecommunications to investigate NFL scrambling and decide whether it was legally appropriate.

“I have real reservations about it,” Bates said. “So I’m considering legislation to prevent the league from doing it. At this point, it depends on public reaction. If it continues to come down soundly against the NFL, I think the bill can pass. It seems to me the NFL got hysterical and is going against the majority and the needs of consumers.”

Susan Kerr, a spokeswoman for CBS Sports, said from New York that scrambling was done at the request of the NFL.

“The NFL asks us to do it, because it protects the interests of the home team,” Kerr said. “If you’re with the Rams organization and somebody in Southern California has the capability of sitting home or going to a sports bar and watching multiple games, that threatens attendance of Rams’ home games. Scrambling protects the popularity of local teams.”

But Pinchbeck says the opposite, that scrambling was a “condition” spelled out by the networks in the four-year, $3.6-billion agreement that takes effect this season.

And Jay Rosenstein, vice president for sports programming at CBS, said that scrambling had been the “mandate” of local affiliates to the networks since negotiations for the new agreement began.

“The NFL has its own reasons for wanting to protect its copyright,” Rosenstein said from New York. “We have a number of issues vis a vis the network-affiliate relationship. When you spend that kind of money ($1.5 billion by CBS alone) to provide football to local affiliates, you expect the games to be watched. The opportunity to sell commercials in those games is a way of getting back our rather substantial investment.”

Rooftop “dishes” that pick up signals beamed from satellites receive only network feeds, and not the broadcasts of local stations. Thus, users of such technology don’t see local and regional commercials. (National, network commercials are fed via satellite.)

A senior official at NBC, requesting anonymity, said the networks demanded scrambling because of the threat represented by dish owners and patrons of sports bars to the Nielsen ratings.

“If every football fan in America went to sports bars to watch the games, there would be nobody at home watching games,” the official said from New York. “That’s what we want, that’s what we live by-- people at home watching games .

“Advertisers don’t pay the dish owner. They pay the networks and the local affiliates. If you’re not watching at home, you represent an audience that can’t be measured--by the Nielsen ratings or any other survey I know of.”

Lebovitz, the San Diego restaurateur, said attorneys for the Assn. of Sports Fans’ Rights are “exploring the possibility” of obtaining an injunction to prevent scrambling on Sept. 9. He said that the “1,000 or so” sports bars across America would “simply go out of business” if scrambling is enforced.

“We believe the NFL is vulnerable in the antitrust area.”