Date: 1st March 2001

Will NBC X Out The XFL?


Top industry analysts are predicting that the XFL will not last beyond a single season, despite NBC's substantial investment in the organization, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday. "This is not good football and there's no way General Electric Co. Chairman Jack Welch or NBC President Bob Wright are going to allow it on NBC for a second season; it's not going to happen,'' Jerry Solomon, former president of national broadcast for SFM Media Corp. and now an industry consultant, told the wire service.

NBC affiliate executives were also adamant that the network must bail out of the league. "
We aren't going to live with crappy numbers forever," Pap Patton program director of KRON San Francisco, told Bloomberg. Some analysts predicted that NBC might move the games to Saturday afternoon or to one of its cable channels for the remainder of the current season.

Source: Studio Briefing