Couple followups re: Big 12 TV deals

Had a pair of items to follow up on.  The Big 12 provided the following responses.

1) ABC will continue to have a six appearance limit for their portion of the package, including any games on ESPN, until 2016.  At that point the appearance limits in all packages go away.  Makes sense when you consider that the Big 12 is no longer a conference that divides its television revenue by appearances on a particular network

2) Network exclusivity no longer exists. Any FOX network, cable or broadcast, can air at the same time as a game on ABC & the ESPN Networks

9/22 Television Confirmations

Follow here and here for television selection confirmation for games being played on 9/22.

Maryland at WVU, 12pm (F/X)
UTEP at Wisconsin, 12pm (ESPN/ESPN2)
Virginia at TCU, 12pm (ESPN/ESPN2)
Bowling Green at Virginia Tech, 12pm (ESPNU)
UAB at Ohio St., 12pm (BTN)
Central Michigan at Iowa, 12pm (BTN)
Kentucky at Florida, 12:21pm (SECNet)
Army at Wake Forest, 12:30pm (ACCNet)
Miami (FL) at Georgia Tech, 3pm (ACC RSNs)
Missouri at South Carolina, 3:30pm (CBS)
Temple at Penn St., 3:30pm (ABC/ESPN2)
Oregon St. at UCLA, 3:30pm (ABC/ESPN2)
East Carolina at North Carolina, 3:30pm (ESPNU)
Kansas at Northern Illinois, 3:30pm (ESPN3)
South Dakota at Northwestern, 3:30pm (BTN)
Idaho St. at Nebraska, 3:30pm (BTN)
Eastern Michigan at Michigan St., 3:30pm (BTN)
Colorado at Washington St., 4pm (F/X)
California at USC, 6pm (Pac-12 Networks)
Memphis at Duke, 6pm (ESPN3)
The Citadel at NC State, 6pm (ESPN3)
LSU at Auburn, 7pm (ESPN)
Rutgers at Arkansas, 7pm (ESPNU)
South Carolina St. at Texas A&M, 7pm (SEC/FOX RSNs)
Kansas St. at Oklahoma, 7:30pm (FOX)
Akron at Tennessee, 7:30pm (CSS)
Vanderbilt at Georgia, 7:45pm (ESPN2)
Clemson at Florida St., 8pm (ABC)
Utah at Arizona St., 10pm (Pac-12 Networks)
Arizona at Oregon, 10:30pm (ESPN)

12 day picks guesses for 9/22 games

I'll post these on Sundays.  Kickoff times for these should be announced on Monday. Don't see any 12 day picks to be used yet.

Virginia at TCU, 12pm F/X
Eastern Michigan at Michigan St., 12pm ESPN
Miami at Georgia Tech, 12pm ESPN2
East Carolina at North Carolina, 12pm ESPNU
Idaho St. at Nebraska, 12pm BTN
Temple at Penn St., 12pm BTN
Vanderbilt at Georgia, 12pm SEC Network
Bowling Green at Virginia Tech, 12:30pm (semi-confirmed) ACC Network
Memphis at Duke, 3pm ACC RSNs
Cal at USC, 3pm Pac-12 Network
LSU at Auburn, 3:30pm CBS
UAB at Ohio St., 3:30pm ABC/ESPN2
Maryland at West Virginia, 3:30pm ABC/ESPN2
Army at Wake Forest, 3:30pm ESPNU
South Dakota at Northwestern, 3:30pm BTN
UTEP at Wisconsin, 3:30pm BTN
Central Michigan at Iowa, 3:30pm BTN
Oregon St. at UCLA, 4pm F/X
Missouri at South Carolina, 7pm ESPN
Rutgers at Arkansas, 7pm ESPNU
South Carolina St. at Texas A&M, SEC/FOX RSNs
Kansas St. at Oklahoma (90% confirmed), 7:30pm FOX
Akron at Tennessee, 7pm SEC/CSS
Kentucky at Florida, 7:45pm ESPN2
Clemson at Florida St., 8pm ABC
Arizona at Oregon, 10:30pm ESPN
Colorado at Washington St., 10:30pm ESPNU
Utah at Arizona St., 10:30pm Pac-12 Network

ESPN3 Exclusives
Kansas at NIU
The Citadel at NC State

Confirmed FBS games on national nets & syndication
Ole Miss at Tulane, 12pm FSN
Massachusetts at Miami (OH), 12pm MAC/ESPN+
VMI at Navy, 3:30pm CBS Sports Network
USF at Ball St., 4:30pm MAC/ESPN+
FAU at Alabama, 5pm PPV
South Alabama at Mississippi St., 7pm PPV
Michigan at Notre Dame, 7:30pm NBC
Fresno St. at Tulsa, 8pm CBS Sports Network
Louisiana Tech at Illinois, 8pm BTN
Syracuse at Minnesota, 8pm BTN
Nevada at Hawai'i, 10:30pm NBC Sports Network

Big 12 rights deal

This is probably redundant but here's a brief recap of the Big 12 rights deals with FOX and ESPN

Football

The meat of the deal revolves around football.  ESPN retains rights to 19 games per year with the number jumping to 23 in 2016.  FOX retains approximately 38 games per year.  Some of the key items revolve around institutional telecasts & broadcast vs. cable games

* Of ESPN's 19 games, they can air on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU or Longhorn Network.  How does Longhorn Network fit?  Isn't it the institutional platform for Texas?  Yes it is.  As ESPN's Burke Magnus corrected me on Twitter, games on Longhorn Network count towards the 19 games for any game after the 1st Texas game (aka Texas's institutional game).
* No more than 4-5 games can appear on ESPNU.
* Anywhere from 13-15 of the 19 games must be full national in some form.  Either by a national game on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU or through a reverse mirror combination with ABC and ESPN/ESPN2.  In short, on the ESPN side, they no longer have to negotiate with FOX to place games on the cable networks nor to do reverse mirroring of games.
* FOX must place at least six of its games on its broadcast network and another six games on a national cable outlet.  I presume that "national cable outlet" today means F/X (could be a different channel in the future) since FSN is not cleared in many areas of the country on regional sports networks not majority owned by FOX.
* If a school elects not to televise its institutional game, the rights to that game revert back to FOX for broadcasting
* At least four Thursday games per year including Thanksgiving (looks like this will start in 2013 with the exception of Thanksgiving 2012) and one game on Sunday of Labor Day weekend
* ESPN and FOX combine to hold four six-day picks
* No more than four 8:15pm local time starts with various restrictions

One way to look at is is that FOX/ABC should be the top choice each week, FX/ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU make up the national cable tier, then FSN and FOX College Sports would represent the syndication package for the conference due to regional pre-emptions.

I have some questions out re: appearance maximums on FOX/ABC and what exclusivity exists between ABC and FOX in terms of whether, for example, ABC and FSN could air a game at the same time.  Previously ABC windows were exclusive with no FOX cable telecasts allowed.

Basketball

ESPN retains its role as the exclusive rightsholder to the conference.  It does have an agreement with CBS to sublicense games to the broadcast network.

* Compared to the previous deal, ESPN will have 10-15 more national games
* The number of ESPNU games will double from 20 to 40
* Six games can be exclusively webcasted on ESPN3
* No change in the number of games offered via Big 12 Network syndication
* At least four games per school will be held by each school to be aired with at least 50 total games from all conference members to be aired regionally or locally via institutional networks
* ESPN can sublicense up to 20 games per season to another national cable outlet

More MBK schedule discussion

Since I last wrote on MBK schedule discussion, the Big East, Atlantic 10 and Pac-12 have released their television schedules, along with a new change to the Mountain West championship schedule.

* The Big East, playing with 15 schools this year, released their schedule on Wednesday.  Mondays still are the conference's spotlight slot on ESPN, and CBS stepped up with a commitment to six conference games, more than they've ever carried.  In the past, the conference has had some games carried exclusively on ESPN3, but with one less team than previous years meaning a slightly smaller number of conference games, all games may be regionally televised if they aren't televised on ESPN Networks or CBS.

* The Atlantic 10, playing with 16 members this year with the additions of Butler & VCU and one more year with Temple, saw a huge increase in the number of televised games, specifically with CBS Sports Network.  CBSSN will carry 34 A-10 games, exactly double the number of games they televised last year.  ESPN Networks will again carry 14 games over ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU.  CBS Sports Network will continue to manage a regional package and CBS, in addition to one regular season conference game, will again carry the conference championship.

* An addition to CBS's championship's schedule is the Mountain West championship, televised the last six on Versus/NBC Sports Network.  The game will fill the time slot where the Pac-10/12 championship aired.  The conference has also modified its championship schedule, pushing its quarterfinals back one day to Wednesday so that all four quarterfinal games will air on CBS Sports Network.  Presumably, CBS Sports Network's championship week schedule would look like this:

Wednesday: MW Quarterfinals & Patriot League Championship
Thursday: C-USA Quarterfinals
Friday: MW & C-USA Semifinals
Saturday: A-10 Semifinals

* If I remember right, the goal of the Pac-12 was to try to get more exposure for its sports, particularly football and men's basketball.  The football goal is being met with games on FOX, F/X and ESPN, particularly the FOX and F/X games during prime viewing hours for the east coast.  I'm not sure the happened in men's basketball and maybe that sport is the tradeoff for the better times in football.

I ran a quick count and of the games that will air on ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU and FSN, in 2012-13 the conference will have 50 of its 69 nationally televised games tip off at 9pm ET or later.  Compared to last year, that is nearly double the national telecasts tipping off at later east coast times (26).  Specifically 22 games will tip off at 11pm ET, compared to 10 last year (count includes conference tournament games).  Part of those changes involve a new consistent 11pm ET ESPN2 window on Wednesdays and it looks like more FSN's telecasts will tip off at 10pm ET or later on weekends.  But the conference's championship, in Las Vegas now instead of Los Angeles, will also tip off at 11pm, presumably after the Big East championship.

Administrative change with use of WatchESPN & ESPN3 links

Hi.  With the changes to WatchESPN and ESPN3 making them distinctly separate products, though loosely intertwined, I'm going to make some changes when it comes to listing them on the site.

Going forward, only one of the two link images will be listed.  WatchESPN will be listed for any game that requires the WatchESPN service to view the game.  Typically those games are ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU games.

ESPN3 will be used for games that are exclusively on ESPN3 plus games available on the ESPN GamePlan service.

The reason for the change is two-fold:

1) It will allow me a little extra real estate in the "Coverage Notes" area of each games
2) WatchESPN includes games on ESPN3

In essence, I'll be listing the minimum ESPN internet service required to view each game.  Consider WatchESPN the higher ranking of the two services.

Thank you.

Notes from opening Saturday

Recovering from some of the bumbling mistakes Syracuse made that cost them a victory vs. Northwestern.  That late hit call was far from the only one.

* FSN went back to being...FSN.  The following season after Comcast and the Big Ten Network came to an agreement, FSN de-emphasized its brand nationally in favor of the "College Football Saturday" moniker.     Remember, FOX (via NewsCorp) owns 51% of BTN.  De-emphasizing the FSN name to get a channel carried might have been a concession.

FOX began to tout its name a little more last year with the addition of the F/X games and went full out yesterday, identifying all games with "CFB on FOX" and "FOX College Football" and the use of the FOX logo prominently. Coincidence?  I think not.  Now that Comcast's RSNs are gone, FSN can go back to being FSN.

* Dish Network and BTN came together for a short term agreement so that Dish subscribers could see the opening games.  The length of the short term agreement (those were the Big Ten Network's words) is unknown.

* Comcast did black out its C-USA coverage out of market.  I wasn't home and wasn't counting on it, but who would have been enforcing that blackout?  Maybe FOX since they're the primary rightsholder.  The CSS games are supposed to be regional.  Then again, Comcast's coverage of Towson at Kent St. was blacked out too.

* The ESPN3/WatchESPN changes continue to be a cluster.  As some have noted, the west coast can see many of the games early in the day.  Well, there's some fine print on the blackouts.  They start at 6pm LOCAL time for you, the viewer at home during the week & noon on the weekends.  Also, I think there was something odd going on with the 3:30pm ABC/ESPN2 slot.  I think I was able to get the Southern Miss-Nebraska game via ESPN3 even though it was on ABC.  Miami-BC was correctly blacked out on ESPN2.

* Many areas missed the first FOX College Football pregame show due to the length of the Cardinals-Nationals game.  FOX is in a bit of a bind.  They should be starting their MLB programming earlier if they wish to show the pregame.  On the flipside, while I know FOX has dumped out of MLB except for local markets in the event of a lengthy rain delay, I don't know what they can do for a long running game.  Starting MLB a half hour earlier would help, but in September they also run into issues with some of their affiliates carrying syndicated college football from the SEC and ACC.  I counted about 20 affiliates carrying Buffalo-Georgia and 15 carrying Elon-UNC, so they can't move the MLB coverage too far up in the day.

Might be time for FOX to create a dedicated web stream, either for the game or the pregame, for situations when things run long.