Friday, October 14, 2016

Some CFB & 2016-17 MBK scheduling notes

* With the move of Florida vs. LSU to 11/19, plus the earlier move of two American Athletic Conference games to 11/5 (Tulane at UCF) and 11/19 (Navy at East Carolina), you might be curious about how that affect the number of TV windows for the two dates.

From what I can tell about November 5th, the effect will be minimal.  The American Athletic Conference allows for games on ESPN3 and should be within the tolerances that are allowed for as part of their TV deals should a game go to ESPN3, those tolerances being that 80-90 percent of their games appear on linear television outlets.  ESPNEWS was already scheduled for three telecast window and both ESPN and ESPN2 were scheduled for four.  ESPNU intended to have a tape delayed SWAC game at approximately 10:30pm ET, but could move that to Sunday if needed (something I believe they've done before) since 11/5 has two Mountain West selections, though both could also air on ESPN3 if necessary.

As for 11/19, the cancellation of Florida & LSU's originally scheduled games to face each other slims the number of games down by one, which allows for Navy at East Carolina to be added into the inventory without any major shifting.  This date had each SEC Network telecast window showing two concurrent games, six total games for the day over two feeds, which they could continue to do.

* ESPN and CBS released their men's college basketball television schedules yesterday, and FOX has provided a slightly revised schedule as they elevated a handful of Big 12 games to "national" FSN status.

Here are a few interesting items from those releases:

  • The Sun Belt's two ESPN2 telecasts are at two of the times would not necessarily consider looking for college basketball: 
    • January 2nd, towards the end of the Rose Bowl and during the first part of the Sugar Bowl
    • Janaury 16th in the afternoon.  The MLK Jr. holiday tends to have a lot of NBA, some NHL and, this year, a Big East marathon on FS1.
  • There are still some holes in the ESPNU schedule on Thursdays & Saturdays after cross checking against ESPN's women's basketball coverage.  Last week I questioned whether that space was being held for the CAA.  I believe the question is still valid, at least until their media day in just over ten days.
    • There's also an interesting date switch for the Tulsa at Tulane basketball game in the ESPN release from Sunday 3/5 to Saturday 3/4 (neither school nor the American has acknowledged the switch yet) that may be helping to clear the road for ESPNU to air the CAA semis, provided that the date change is accurate.
  • For CBS Sports Network, we got an answer as to what the space was between the C-USA and Mountain West semifinals on Friday 3/10 & the time between the Atlantic 10 semis and C-USA men's final on Saturday 3/11 would get used for.  On Friday, ESPN sublicensed the MAC men's semifinals to CBSSN with an earlier start time than usual (5:30pm instead of 6:30pm or 7pm for the first game).  On Saturday, the C-USA women's championship will precede the men's championship.
So what don't we know yet, and to be clear, what hasn't been finalized yet to make it to, say, one of the releases already provided:
  • Who is televising the Under Armour Reunion event at Madison Square Garden on Monday 12/12?  NBCSN seems to be open, as do ESPN2, FS1, CBSSN and American Sports Network should they want it.  ESPN happens to televise the Under Armour All American Game for high school football players, so they could still be involved.  On the flipside, ESPN is heavily involved as a broadcaster of the upcoming Nike/Phil Knight college basketball event in Portland next season, so Under Armour could look elsewhere.
  • The broadcaster for the Ivy League tournament is still not known.  NBCSN continued on with the conference in football and that commitment could extend to basketball too as they don't have any NHL commitments in the afternoon on 3/11 or 3/12.  

2 comments:

bigddan11 said...

NBCSN's contract with the Ivy League has typically only been football.

Fox had the rights to what would have been a championship game last season, should it have been necessary. Given that they carried over Ivy League football this year, they are also a possibility.

Another possibility could be One World Sports Network, which has expressed an interest in getting more collegiate sports. There's also ESPN3. ESPN3, in conjunction with ASN, carried the game 2 seasons ago. We likely won't know for certain until the Ivy League decides to announce their tv schedule.

Matt Sarzyniak said...

Great point about One World Sports, Dan.