Cable nets offer Super Bowl halftime alternatives
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NEW YORK  - For fans unmoved by the prospect of a Tom Petty Super Bowl halftime show, the cable industry has an answer. Many answers, in fact.
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FOXBOROUGH - They are not much different from the folks who read the sports pages and call the talk shows. They are football fans and they will watch the games this weekend. Just like you.
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DIY Network will stage its version of Super Bowl XLI in Miami: Super Knit Sunday encouraging needle enthusiasts to knit or crochet squares for charity.  A marathon of Knitty Gritty Feb.
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Concerned about where they could watch Saturday night's game between the Patriots and New York Giants when it was airing exclusively on the NFL Network, fans throughout the region reached out to Patriots owner Robert Kraft. They suggested a viewing party at Kraft's home.
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(InfoWorld) - On Feb. 5, at about 7 a.m. local time, I'll be watching the Super Bowl. For those of us living in foreign lands where football means a round ball, the NFL doesn't get primetime coverage. Despite growing up as an NFL fan, when I say "football" now to anyone except my mother, I'm talking about soccer. When I watch football on any given weekend, it's the glorious exploits of my beloved Arsenal Football Club I'm enjoying, not those of the New York Giants. During almost 11 years in China, I have slowly seen those vestiges of the U.S. unavailable here in Beijing disappear. The Internet changed the way we live overseas. Letters became e-mails. Amazon.com became the Berlin Airlift to the book-deprived, with CDs and DVDs following soon after. But regular National Football League coverage was one of just two remaining treats that eluded me. That changed on Sept. 13, 2006. On that day, I discovered Ben & Jerry's ice cream at my supermarket, for about $9 per pint. That morning, I watched an NFL game, live via the Internet, in my home. NFL Enterprises embraced the Internet for the 2006-07 season. Previously the NFL did not allow webcasting of its games, except for text and graphic-based commentary such as GameCast. But this year, international fans could buy a GamePass from YahooÂ to view games live and streamed, at either $249.99 for the season, or $24.99 per week. Apple's iTunes Music Store sold season passes for fans to watch their favorite teams, uploading each game after its completion. I took a different route. I downloaded TVUplayer , which seems to be a mass re-broadcast from a Slingbox MediaÂ device in San Jose, California. There was the NFL, complete with American sportscasters and commercials ("This is our country..."). I ignored that it was 8:30 a.m. and made popcorn. I don't understand how TVUplayer is legal, but if they ever become a paid service, they can have my money. ESPN and ABC disappeared midway through the season, so I lost the Sunday and Monday night games that I used to watch on Monday and Tuesday mornings, respectively, but Sunday night remained sleepless as I watched the day games. If living overseas teaches us anything, it's that in the Internet world, content distribution and licensing methods are grossly obsolete. I would have paid to watch the NFL live years ago -- but they wouldn't take my money. Cinema and DVD release dates seem equally ludicrous when you live in a market where they're meaningless. Piracy makes a lot more sense when you realize that the guy down the street can offer you "Casino Royale" on DVD today, but Hollywood thinks you should wait eight months. Next season promises to be even better for football fans here. On Aug. 8 -- exactly one year prior to the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing -- China will host to its first-ever NFL exhibition game, with the New England Patriots playing the Seattle Seahawks. But when the regular season begins about three weeks later, it will be first down and 10 on the Internet.
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New York area cable operator Cablevision says it will carry the Rutgers-Kansas State Texas Bowl on Dec. 28 to viewers unable to get the NFL Network.
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The National Football League plans to  broadcast Thursday and Saturday games live over the Internet to  some customers of Verizon Communications Inc.  and  DirecTV Group Inc , NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said  on Wednesday.
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Variety - NEW YORK -- News Corp. is planning a sports cable network to take on ESPN, but the decision to greenlight the net will hinge on negotiations currently under way with the NFL.
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By Sara Ganim, The Centre Daily Times, State College, Pa.  Feb. 3--It might take a bit of re-wiring for Centre County residents to watch the Superbowl in high-definition for the first time Sunday.
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By Sanford Nowlin, San Antonio Express-News  Dec. 12--Time Warner Cable is aiming a new local ad blitz at the NFL  after facing weeks of public pressure from the league for not carrying its  fledgling cable network.
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Sunday's Super Bowl could  feature some cat-and-mouse moves as the New England Patriots  and New York Giants toy with what to take from their  hard-fought, regular-season finale clash of a month ago.
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The National Football League wanted to package its tribute to Pat Tillman much the same way it&#39;s planning the next halftime show at the Super Bowl.
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NEW YORK  - After the fiasco that was  this year's Super Bowl halftime show featuring Janet Jackson  and a wardrobe malfunction, the NFL has hired Don Mischer  Prods. to put together its 12-minute show for the 2005 event.
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If you&#39;re already paying for high-speed Internet service, why not make the most of your money? Those cables aren&#39;t just good for downloading sports scores, they can digitally transmit and receive phone calls, too.
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Years ago, Super Bowl spots disappeared after the one or two times they were shown during the broadcast. Today, they have afterlives because of Web sites, blogs, and video clips.
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A year removed from the Janet Jackson debacle, the NFL has come up with the perfect way to clean up its act at halftime of the Super Bowl: Hire a British knight to entertain.
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On Thanksgiving, the NFL will air the first of eight live pro football games on its own network. But it won't be available to many viewers across the country because the league hasn't reached carriage agreements with several major cable operators.