NFL
Continues To Push Distribution, Barter Plays Role
The National
Football League continues to spread its footprint across more
networks, signing a deal with Ion Media for a weekly one-hour �NFL
Game of the Week� every Saturday at 6 p.m. through January.
Ion, a
TV-station group that reaches 93 million viewers, is the second
network deal engineered by the NFL in the last month. A weekly
prime-time series called �NFL Network: Total Access� runs every
Saturday evening from 9 to 10 on MyNetworkTV through the end of the
NFL season.
Ion will pay
the NFL an undisclosed license fee for �NFL Game of the Week� and
will keep all of the advertising time in each telecast. It will also
run promos for the NFL as part of the arrangement. The MyNet
contract is more of a barter deal, in which the NFL doesn't pocket
any cash but instead gets some 30-second spots to sell in the �Total
Access� telecast.
NFL Films will
also produce 21 episodes of a new half-hour series for Ion called
�Stories of the NFL,� consisting of profiles of players and what
their lives are like off the field. It kicks off in February 2008.
Brandon
Burgess, CEO of Ion Media Networks, and Howard Katz, chief operating
officer of NFL films, negotiated the contract.