The story behind football's innovative yellow first down line

Re:The story behind football's innovative yellow first down ... by chaz on Friday May 30, 2014 @09:12PM (#7824878)

> Hill liked the concept, of course, but Fox thought that the price, $25,000 per game, was too steep. [...] Our last stop was ESPN and the reception was decidedly different.

So interesting to see that FOX balked at the seemingly low $25k but ESPN didn't flinch and insisted on exclusivity for games they didn't even have rights to. Telling of how the networks viewed themselves and each other, but also how important it is to find the customers that are the true believers.

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Re:The story behind football's innovative yellow first down ... by jnazario on Friday May 30, 2014 @09:51PM (#7824970)

> insisted on exclusivity for games they didn't even have rights to

given the price per game and the market value for that, it seems like a low price to screw your competition. by insisting on an exclusive deal they couldn't use it in the playoffs - anywhere. what a well played "screw you buddy" move.

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Re:The story behind football's innovative yellow first down ... by frenchman_in_ny on Friday May 30, 2014 @10:54PM (#7825084)

ESPN likely didn't flinch because they charge a cost per subscriber of ~$5/mo (as part of your cable bill), whereas FOX is charging significantly less. So ESPN can afford it.

ESPN is the 800# gorilla when it comes to TV programming and just about every cable network is trying to emulate them.

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Re:The story behind football's innovative yellow first down ... by AznHisoka on Friday May 30, 2014 @09:54PM (#7824977)

Reminds me of those Excite and Yahoo idiots who refused to buy Google for a cheap $1 million. Some people just don't deserve to be at the top.

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Re:The story behind football's innovative yellow first down ... by bbwharris on Friday May 30, 2014 @09:59PM (#7824988)

But would google have ended up as google if they were bought at that price?

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Re:The story behind football's innovative yellow first down ... by Goopplesoft on Friday May 30, 2014 @10:07PM (#7825006)

Cliche but, at least his, hindsight is 20/20

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Re:The story behind football's innovative yellow first down ... by KPLauritzen on Saturday May 31, 2014 @08:22AM (#7825860)

There is a recent interview with Marc Andreesen on EconTalk where he talk about how hard it would have been to realize that Google was a good buy at the time. Details here: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/05/marc_andreessen.htm...

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