Paul Domowitch of the Philadelphia Daily News has an excellent story today about the league's treatment of NFL Films. The NFL Network was supposed to provide a larger platform for the classic footage that helped make the league the monster it has become.
Instead, it sounds like the great Steve Sabol and his employees in Mount Laurel, N.J., are being marginalized, and in some cases, sent packing. Earlier this month, the league laid off 21 NFL Films employees, which accounts for 7.4 percent of the group's work force. The league says it's simply part of a belt-tightening process, but it sounds like something else.
"Truth be told, no one at Films right now is thanking the day the NFL Network was created," writes Domowitch. "The company-wide sentiment is that the network's ongoing war with the nation's two largest cable operators, Comcast and Time Warner, which is costing the league an estimated $250 million a year in subscriber fees, along with [NFL Media chief Steve] Bornstein's disinterest in Films-produced programming, was directly responsible for the layoffs, though both Bornstein and [Patriots owner Bob] Kraft said there is no linkage."
Domowitch cites several league sources saying that Bornstein, formerly of ESPN, thinks NFL Films' signature programming is too expensive and that there's no longer a market for it.
"The shots that people associate with Films, those long, beautiful, super slo-mo shots of a spiraling football, the NFL Network people hate that," a league executive familiar with the situation told Domowitch. "It's too slow for them."
Bornstein vehemently denies that's the case, telling the New York Daily News recently, "I think NFL Films is a critical part of not only the mythology of the NFL, but a critical part of the success of the NFL Network."
I'm afraid this won't end well for NFL Films, a group that is largely responsible for putting the league on the map. I had the opportunity to visit with Steve Sabol for a few minutes during the Super Bowl. He and his father, Ed, are remarkable men who've done a great service for the NFL. It would be a shame to see the league turn its back on them now.
