a year after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ended a policy that formally forbade multichannel television providers from distributing telecasts of sporting events that had been blacked out by local broadcast television stations. Then-FCC chairman Tom Wheeler considered such policies to be "obsolete". The policies are still enforced via contractual agreements between the NFL and its media partners. Exclusivity of local simulcasts for cable games Per NFL policies, all games that are exclusively televised on pay television or streaming, including ESPN's Monday Night Football, and Thursday Night Football games that are only shown on NFL Network, are syndicated to over-the-air broadcasters in the markets of the teams involved, and blacked out on the cable channel in defense of the local simulcast. The local market for these rights is defined as any station within the radius of a team's respective stadium. This policy attracted controversy in December 2007, when Hartford, Connecticut CBS affiliate WFSB was refused permission to air the local simulcast of a New England Patriots-New York Giants game on December 29, 2007. The game, which was part of the Thursday Night Football package on NFL Network, would see the Patriots attempt to become the first NFL team since 1972 and the expansion of the regular season to 16 games, to finish the regular season undefeated. At the time, NFL Network was available only on a sports tier of cable provider Comcast in the immediate viewing areas of the Patriots and Giants. Senator John Kerry and Rep. Ed Markey, both of the state of Massachusetts and fans of the Patriots team, wrote to the NFL as well as Comcast and Time Warner Cable, to request that the Patriots-Giants game be aired at least on basic cable in order to reach the highest possible number of television-viewing fans, citing the "potentially historic" nature of the game. Kerry clarified the next week that he did not intend to interrupt current negotiations between the cable operators and NFL. On December 19, 2007, Joe Courtney and other members of the Connecticut Congressional Delegation wrote to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to try to have the NFL allow wider broadcast access to the game. Consequently, on December 26, the NFL announced that the game would be simulcast nationally on CBS and NBC, in addition to WCVB-TV (ABC) in Boston and WWOR-TV (MyNetworkTV) in Secaucus, New Jersey (which is part of the New York City media market)—which