Thursday, September 17, 2009

Tidbits

A few small items worth discussing:

  • A reader sent in that Bright House Sports will also show the SEC package of games that CSS originally signed up for. Coupled with the recent announcement from Cox Sports in Louisiana, the CSS package should reach the entire footprint, excluding satellite.
  • After probably a lot of backroom negotiation, the Stanford-Washington game on 9/26 will be televised by Fox College Sports. Earlier this week, UW issued a press release which seemed to blame Stanford for the reason why the game would not be on TV.
  • Right around the same time Washington issued their release about their game originally not being televised, Nevada also issued a "broadcast information" release about their road game at Colorado St. In the release, Nevada simply says the game would not be on TV because the MWC's TV partners decided not to pick it up AND they would not grant a waiver to allow a local broadcast back to Reno. I believe this is the 2nd time Nevada has been denied a local broadcast by a MWC since CBS College Sports/CSTV purchased the MWC's TV rights. A few years ago they denied the right for Nevada to do a local broadcast of a Nevada-UNLV game. Different circumstances though as the mtn. did televise the game, but the mtn. did not have carriage in Reno.
  • In other PAC-10 related TV news, Oregon took a somewhat unusual step to announce the kickoff time of their home game vs. Washington St. in the event it would not be televised on ABC or Versus on 10/3. Me thinks that the poor shape of the Cougars has already eliminated this game from television coverage.
  • Sports Business Journal did a great followup article on the demise of the Arizona Wildcats Sports Network, which really never did get off the ground. According to SBJ, neither IMG nor the Wildcats athletic department ever checked with the conference regarding the parameters involved in a local broadcast deal. The real problem was when the partners announced affiliates across the nation, which put them in violation of the deals the conference struck with ABC and FSN.

4 comments:

Mark said...

On your football2009 pages, why do you list Big Ten Network as a 'third tier' network but ESPNU as National? Last I checked the BTN had 20 million more subscribers than ESPNU. Granted that was before DirectTV changed it's tier but, why isn't BTN listed as national? You make it seem like it's some back lot production.

Matt Sarzyniak said...

I list ESPNU as national since it seems to have a consistent national distribution among the big cable and satellte companies. The Big Ten Network coverage is on basic systems in the the Big Ten states, but is on sports tiers in the rest of the country on cable and Dish Network.

It isn't meant to be demeaning towards the BTN, particularly since it has some of the best production out there. I used third tier instead of national because the BTN games are generally chose after both ABC and ESPN/ESPN2.

Mark said...

But ESPN doesn't choose it's SEC and Big East games before ESPNU's games of the same conference?

Matt Sarzyniak said...

ESPNU does fall lower in the selection order for the Big East, ACC and SEC. In some cases, like the ACC and Big East, ESPN/ESPN2 is completely skipped on a given weekend.

ESPNU supposedly falls AFTER Raycom's selection in the ACC order, but no one would confuse Raycom with being nationally available.

Maybe I'll think of a better set of words for the BTN telecasts, but I think they should be set aside, separate from ESPN's on the Big Ten page. As for ESPNU, I'll consider it.