I was speaking of the cable companies, namely Comcast and Time Warner. Technically they are not monopolies but they are pretty darned close. In any given community there is only one cable company. And the big two now have, what, about 80% of the total market between them? The dish networks are still small players.

It's ironic that you mention the Dish networks - and I'll use Direct TV as an example. The ONLY way to get the NFL Ticket is through Direct TV. And that irritates me to no end. With Comcast, I have the option to pay a little more to get things like the NFL Network, the BBC, or any other specialty channels. But the NFL and DirectTV have a deal of exclusivity for out-of-market games - so keep that in mind next time the topic of the "big" cable companies comes up.

I realize you have made the choice to pay the ~$5 extra a month for Comcast's sports package. That's fine, it's your decision. But the reason there has been so much controversy about the NFL Network is that almost all NFL games are generally available to everyone, except these 8 games a year on the NFL Network. IIRC there are something like 60 or 70 million homes that get the rest of the NFL schedule and don't get the NFL Network.

Once again, your statements are misleading. Here in the central PA area, I'm largely stuck with Eagles games (yuck), and sometimes games for the Steelers, Jets, etc. So "almost all NFL games are generally available to everyone" isn't really only true if you have DirectTV. I'd much rather watch games played by contenders, versus our local teams. And because of where I now live, I actually CAN'T get DirectTV (long story).

Comcast has stated in the past an interest in pay-per-view games (which would be great!), but because of the deal between DirectTV and the NFL, it can't happen.

So while there are things about Comcast that I don't like, I've got larger grips with DirectTV (their advertising makes me want to go medieval on their marketing people).