Taverns’ TVs Get a Cold Reception : Pro football: The NFL turns up the legal heat on bars near Cleveland that use large antennas to pull in broadcasts of Brown home games.

Unless you count the guy who dances alone every night with the jukebox, Fuzzy’s Tavern has never done much to scare anybody.

“Where the Elite Don’t Meet,” is the motto of this small bar, which for 53 years has been the second home of firemen and factory workers in the Cleveland suburb of West Olmstead.

Twenty stools. Nine tables. Kielbasa for sale. Sons sitting next to fathers sitting next to their fathers.

Fuzzy’s also has two television sets. That is where the trouble started.

Because the bar is about 20 miles outside the city, those sets pick up the Cleveland Browns’ blacked-out home games from television stations in Toledo, 65 miles away.

This happens because of an over-sized home antenna and the laws of nature. It does not happen because of an illegally used satellite dish, as if owner Bernie Petrilla could afford one.

The NFL, however, is making no distinction.

Petrilla and owners of five other west-side neighborhood bars like Fuzzy’s are being sued by the league and the Browns for copyright infringement.

The trial, scheduled to begin on Oct. 12 in federal district court, will mark the NFL’s first attempt to control free airwaves.

“Just because somebody has more money than me, they are going to tell me I can’t walk in my bar and turn on my television set?” asked Jim Rivers, owner of Brothers’ Lounge. “Is that right?”

The NFL says there is far more to this case than a set of rabbit ears.

The league says that the bulky receiving devices, between 10 and 15 feet high, are like satellite dishes because they are not used in average homes.

“The league and Browns are pursuing this case for the same reason they have pursued the satellite dish cases,” said Neil K. Roman of Covington and Burling, the firm that serves as general counsel for the NFL. “Namely, that it is difficult to sell a product--tickets to NFL games--that others are giving away for free.”

The bar owners were given a chance to sign a decree promising to refrain from turning the channel to blacked-out games, which have been shown in some of these places for years.

It was a tempting offer because if they lose the case, besides legal fees, each will have to pay $100,000 in damages for each allegedly illegal telecast.

But they refused.

Instead, they have joined in what they believe could be the most important battle of their professional lives.

“We’re not breaking any laws,” Rivers said. “Plain and simple, the league just ain’t got no right.”

Rivers wonders how undercover spotters from the billion-dollar industry even found his 83-year-old bar.

It has 13 stools and six booths, with six feet of walking space between the two. No more than 24 patrons can watch his two small televisions at one time.

There are rarely more than 20 in his bar on Sundays during the football season, and with good reason.

Because of surrounding churches and schools, his antenna only picks up Brown games on Toledo’s Channel 13 during certain types of weather.

“And when we do get the game, the picture is fuzzy, and we got to use the radio for audio,” Rivers said.

When Rivers and the five others were cited by the NFL last Nov. 15 for showing the Browns’ home game against the San Diego Chargers, he wasn’t at his bar. He had driven to the game. The picture was so bad that day, even he wouldn’t watch it.

“Before they had cable in our neighborhood, we needed the antenna just to get Cleveland channels clearly,” Rivers said.

The other four bars are French Creek Tavern, J.P’s Sports Bar and Grille, Slam Jams and Tijuana Taxi Club. They are larger than Fuzzy’s and Brothers’, but few in the group sound like communications pirates.

“Most of the homes in my neighborhood have bigger antennas than I’ve got,” said Joe Zkiam, owner of the 70-year-old French Creek Tavern. “And my antenna would be even smaller, except a tree limb fell on it and broke it, and the people who owned the place then bought a bigger one.”

Borrowing an acronym from the Municipal Stadium end zone crowd known as the Dog Pound, the owners are calling their group P.O.U.N.D.--Public Opposition to Unfair NFL Dictatorship.

They have already held one fund-raising party for other bar owners and vendors. A band marathon is scheduled for Aug. 15.

Fans have been paying a dollar each to sign giant foam footballs that will be sent to the Browns, and the bars are selling P.O.U.N.D. caps and T-shirts.

On the shirt is a drawing of a growling dog, wearing a tag that reads “Art,” for Brown owner Art Modell, standing on top of a television, with the end of an antenna wire in his mouth.

“The NFL has picked out the smallest and the weakest to attack,” said Henry Hilow, an attorney for several of the bars. “But these few have become a mighty band of fighters.”

The NFL is weary of the David and Goliath image that is often used in reports of its business dealings. It claims that, under the guise of nobility and integrity, these are six men trying to get something for nothing.

The case will be decided by what Judge Paul R. Matia rules is the most common use for these large antennas.

If they are ruled to be the kind used by the average person in the West Cleveland neighborhoods, the bar owners will probably win the case.

This is based on a decision by the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1986, in which Judge Stephen Limbaugh wrote that if such systems are the “kind commonly used in private homes,” an exemption to the Copyright Act would apply.

If the antennas are ruled to be exceptions in the neighborhood, the bar owners will be placed in the the same legal category as those who show blacked-out home games from satellite dishes.

In the 20 years since the NFL has enforced blackouts within 75 miles of a game that was not sold out 72 hours in advance, the league has never lost a case against satellite thieves.

“The fact that these bars are using rooftop antennas instead of satellite dishes does not alter the legal analysis,” NFL counsel Roman said. “A comprehensive survey has shown that these are no more commonly found in private homes in the Cleveland area than are satellite dishes, and national statistics support these findings.”

In ordering a preliminary injunction to stop the bars from showing the Browns’ final home game against the Houston Oilers last season, Matia agreed with the NFL’s research.

Citing the testimony of Charles G. Perry, a radio/telecommunications engineer hired by the league, the judge wrote: “The court disagrees with defendants’ contention that they installed home-type systems.”

The bar owners, however, are confident they will win the final ruling because Perry never examined any of their antennas. They will counter his testimony with their own experts.

Jay Lipton, owner of J.P.’s Sports Bar and Grille, said he bought his antenna at Radio Shack and used five men to set it up. Three were on the roof, one was standing at the doorway and one was in front of the television set.

“The guy in the bar would be shouting, ‘A little to the left, a little to the right. . . ,” Lipton said. “How much more of a home-use antenna can you get than one bought at Radio Shack?”

Fred An, manager of a Southland Radio Shack store, said the Model VU190 purchased by Lipton is “sold mostly for home use.” He added: “It’s right there in our catalogue. It is not a satellite . . . it works through the regular airwaves. Mostly homes use it.”

Perry also testified that the use of rotors, which automatically move the antenna, was out of the ordinary.

An, however, disagreed. “Rotors are used so you don’t have to get up on the roof and move it yourself,” he said.

Dennis O’Connor, a Cleveland contractor who lives in Olmstead Falls near several of the bars, said many neighbors have similar antennas.

“If people didn’t go to the bar to watch those games, they would go to each other’s houses. These antennas are everywhere,” he said.

Attorney Hilow remembers Clevelanders fooling with antennas 20 years ago.

“When I was a kid, my neighbor watched every Brown game with his antenna,” Hilow said. “He would send his son on the roof to turn the antenna around, and I think once the boy even fell off, but the man saw every game.”

As the Browns’ fortunes have declined in recent years, so has their attendance in 78,512-seat Municipal Stadium, which is one of the biggest in the league. Only two of the Browns’ eight home games were sellouts last season, during which the team averaged 70,052. It was Cleveland’s lowest non-strike year attendance since 1985.

“It doesn’t seem fair to us that just because Art Modell has one of the biggest stadiums in the league, none of (the Browns’) home games are on television,” O’Connor said. “We could outdraw the rest of the league and still not have our games on television.”

The league attempted to extend its legal reach in this area once before, in 1990, when it announced plans to scramble the satellite signals of all games, so each area of the country could view only the game that was assigned to it.

Led by Norman Lebovitz, a San Diego restaurateur, a consumer group forced the NFL to change its policy after threatened boycotts of sponsors Anheuser-Busch, Inc. and Miller Brewing Co.

League-wide scrambling is expected to be an issue again this fall as the NFL negotiates for a new television deal that would begin next season.

Modell was recently replaced as chairman of the owners’ committee that will do the negotiating. Reportedly, it was because the league wanted somebody who would take a tougher stance in the face of poverty claims by the networks, who want to pay less than the $3.6-billion total in the last four-year deal.

Petrilla doesn’t understand much about those things. He does know that this lawsuit has caused the most emotion in Fuzzy’s since a regular customer died while taking his first relaxing moments there after retiring from the local mill.

After the funeral, a reception was held at Fuzzy’s. The customer’s widow ordered the funeral home to send all the flowers there.

“It’s like a family in there,” Petrilla said. “Maybe what we’re doing is stupid, but, you know, you just got to do it.”