NFL Network’s Steve Bornstein Featured In Newsday Q&A

Steve Bornstein Happy With NFL Network’s Distribution To Date

In a Q&A with NEWSDAY’s Neil Best, NFL Network President & CEO and NFL Exec VP/New Media Steve Bornstein said of the network, “I’m very pleased with the distribution we’ve gotten to date. And more importantly, I think the consumers are happy with it. The ratings have exceeded our expectations, we’re having a good dialogue with our non-carriers right now, and we’re having an even better dialogue with the guys who are carrying us. They like the product.” More Bornstein, on the net’s distribution: “I go back to the early days of ESPN when we were in 1 ½ million homes and everybody said it was insignificant. ... It took ESPN I think eight years to get to 30 million homes. We got to 40 in three years. ... I didn’t think we’d be in 40 million homes for five or six years.”

OWNERSHIP: When asked how much not being owned by a cable company or big media company hurts in getting distribution, Bornstein said, “We’re an independent programmer in a business that has a lot of integration issues. There are lots of currencies going on between big distributors and big programmers. We’re not without some of our own, but we’re not in the media business. The independent guy suffers a little from that, but I don’t need any benefits thrown for the NFL.” Bornstein added “we don’t have any interest” in selling a piece of NFL Network as MLB did in its deals with DirecTV, Comcast and Time Warner.

FRIEND OR FOE? Bornstein, when asked whether NFL Network is a “competitor of ESPN or a partner,” said, “To the degree we all eat, yeah, we all are competing. But we look at ourselves as a complement to our partners. I promote [‘MNF’]. I promote [‘SNF’]. I promote football. I want ESPN to cover the draft. So to the degree we promote the sport that all of my four partners have made a major investment in, it’s good news and that’s complementary and not in opposition” (NEWSDAY.com, 5/3).