What's your No. 1 fear if you subscribe to cable and you're a sports fan? Aside from the signal dying on the first day of the NCAA basketball tournament or on any Saturday or Sunday in the fall, it's that through no fault of your own you might not be able to watch your favorite teams play because of rights disputes between major companies.
We've seen it with the Big Ten Network and several cable companies, and we've seen it with the NFL Network and virtually every cable company. Nothing sucks more as a sports fan than being a paying subscriber, being willing to pay whatever you have to for the games you want to see, and still not being able to watch your favorite team play from the comfort of home. It's a constant dance between content providers and cable distributors over how much channels should cost, and fandom is the collateral damage.
The latest rights dispute that seemed likely was between ESPN and Comcast. Only it never materialized.
While enduring the Big Ten Network's "Friday Night Tailgate" tonight, something interesting presented itself. They showed a clip of Joe Paterno at his finest, hosting Penn State's Friday night pep rally. He wasted little time in picking at an old scab. After singling out members of his '68 and '69 teams in attendance, the massive chip on his shoulder made itself known. After telling the crowd that the players were "screwed" out of a championship, he had this to say:
"We had kicked the devil out of a couple people in bowl games, and the President of the United States at that time went down into Texas with a Southern Strategy and announced that Texas was the national championship (boos).
I'm sitting in my house, the phone rings, it's the White House.
The President would like you come down and we're going to give you a trophy for the longest winning streak in the country. Oooohhhh nooo. Oooohhh nooo. I told them to shove it! And that's true!"
Keep in mind that particular President last held office in 1974 and has been dead more than a decade is dead and buried, and has been that way since 1973. It's now 2008 and Paterno's still miffed and ready to collar the guy.
I imagine the tenacity to hold that kind of grudge for that long and make it so fresh in the telling before thousands of people is part of what keeps Joe Paterno doing the near-impossible job of running a major college football program in his advanced age. He's irritating on his good days and much worse on others, but it's impossible not to respect the tenacity and occasionally get a good laugh at some of the history he's been a part of.
The SEC's television contracts are up and there were plenty of rumors that the conference would look to start up an SEC Network that would be much faster than the Big Ten Network and beat Ohio State in national championship games but ignore the fact that the two conferences were pretty much equal in head to head bowl matuchups.
The rights include tape-delayed football, men's and women's basketball, baseball and Olympic sports. One of Sun Sports' most profitable shows is "Breakfast with the Gators," a Sunday morning replay of the previous day's football game.
Industry analysts say this doesn't necessarily preclude an SEC Network, it does knock out a lot of programming, especially Florida men's basketball, that would be a centerpiece of the hypothetical new channel.
So that's probably out. Also probably out: Jefferson-Pilot or Lincoln Financial or whatever the rinky-dink syndication producer that picked up lower-end SEC games. Who's in?
The SEC is set to announce its new television contracts in August, industry sources say. By all accounts, CBS will retain the broadcast portion and ESPN will retain the cable portion, with ESPNU and ESPN360 also getting rights that were previously reserved for syndication partners.
Uh-oh. No one gets ESPNU. Man the battlements for another year of cable caterwauling.
"I think the fact that the Big Ten Network and Comcast came to an agreement is very encouraging and is a positive development," [VP of public affairs Mary Jo] Green said. "I think the fact that Comcast had similar concerns that we do, and that they were able to come to an agreement is encouraging."
That's a far cry from the standoffish quotes from Time Warner last summer and may indicate a potential deal in the offing. Or it may just be "please don't switch to satellite" posturing. This one, however, seems indisputably positive:
"We know that certain customers are interested in the network and we do hear from them," Green said. "We're hopeful that we can reach an agreement before football season."
Never in the thousand-year history of the Big Ten Network-cable war has a cable company acknowledged that customers might want the channel, and never has anyone come out and claimed they would like to make a deal.
Comcast Corporation and the Big Ten Network announced today that they have reached a long-term multimedia agreement for Comcast to carry Big Ten Network programming across television, broadband and video-on-demand in time for the 2008 college football season.
As to the key issue -- a potential move off expanded basic after an eight-month "trial" -- discussed in last night's post: sports tiers are off the table.
Under the terms of the agreement, Comcast will initially launch the Network as part of its expanded basic level of service... In Spring 2009, Comcast may elect to move the network to a broadly distributed digital level of service in most of its systems in these states.
This isn't quite "expanded basic or death" like the Big Ten wanted but it's not Bennigan's coupons. 80% of the BTN footprint already has digital and that number will only increase going forward. The important thing: no sports tiers in the footprint. Outside the footprint, Comcast can put it wherever it wants, which means sports tier. Overall: a win for the Big Ten, especially if Charter, Mediacom, and Time Warner follow suit.
One final note: we at the Fanhouse would like to bid adieu to Sparky, the jean-shorts-wearing boxing guy who was our mascot during the protracted standoff. You and your preposterously oversized gloves will be missed. Godspeed.
The announcement that Comcast and the Big Ten Network were a week or so away from announcing a carriage deal seemed like a major, major win for the network given the way the Chicago Tribune -- the first source in this third round of "there's gonna be a deal!" stories -- pitched it:
The deal will nearly double the number of homes that can access the BTN, from 30 million to 55 million. In the eight-state Big Ten footprint, the number will surge from 6.5 million to about 13 million.
This implies national distribution on Comcast and is the best-case, pie-in-the-sky fairy scenario.
Whatever, while the cable carrier's people confirm a deal is close, the agreement as it stands now would place the BTN on expanded basic for only eight months -- the upcoming football and basketball season -- on a trial basis and only within the Big Ten's eight-state footprint. Comcast, they say, would then have the option of pulling the BTN off expanded basic and sticking it on the more expensive digital tier, possibly in a sports-channel package.
While Moving the Big Ten network to the digital tier would not be a huge blow, -- Jones notes that 80% of cable subscribers in the Big Ten footprint already have digital -- the specter of the sports tier solution that Comcast was pushing earlier looms large.
The Fanhouse has told you this atleastthrice before, but here it is again: the Big Ten Network and Comcast are about to make a deal. So says everybody. This one's from the Chicago Tribune:
Comcast and the BTN are prepared to put nearly two years of bitter negotiations aside to announce a long-term partnership, the Tribune has learned.
"For all intents and purposes, it's done," one source close to the negotiations said Sunday. Technically, it's not done. But sources expect the deal will be completed and unveiled this week.
(Link via Spartans Weblog.) What's more, the Big Ten Network will provide on demand content including classic games and condensed "snap to snap" replays.
The price? somewhere between 70 and 80 cents, which is some way off the $1.10 that was bandied about as the BTN's asking price during the contentious PR battle waged last summer but also way, way higher than the 25 cents a Comcast vice president told me was the most they'd pay for the network.
Is it make the party time for Big Ten fans? In parts of the Big Ten footprint? And such?
Right, we've been here before, and before, and before, but now the imprimatur of the Sports Business Journal has been put upon your monthly "Comcast, Big Ten Network close to deal!" hyperventilation and it looks legit. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sums up the subscription-only SBJ piece (which the Sporting News has in its entirety):
The magazine, citing unnamed sources, said that Comcast had agreed to launch the network on "expanded basic through most of the Big Ten Conference's eight-state region, as much as 94[%] of it."
The full piece clarifies that the portions of the footprint excluded are likely to be Philadelphia and environs, which would get the channel on digital basic -- no tiers here.
Further confirmation comes from a Detroit Free Press that cites a source of its own before it reiterates the SBJ piece. I think this might be it, folks, at least for people in Michigan, Chicago, Indiana, and parts of Pennsylvania. Time Warner, Charter, and Mediacom are still holdouts. It should be noted that the articles cited expect negotiations to take another couple of whiles, but it appears the scaffolding of an agreement is in place.
Yesterday this space highlighted a Chicago Tribune article with hopeful quotes from Big Ten Network president Mark Silverman about a potential deal with Comcast, concluding that such a public shift in negotiations would be detrimental to their cause unless a deal was truly imminent.
So of course the Purdue Exponent -- the student newspaper -- talks to a Comcast guy who says this:
Comcast spokesman Mark Apple said on Tuesday that the negotiations are still in the same condition as they were a month ago.
"We're still in a position where we feel the best place for it to be carried is on a sports tier, and (Big Ten Network) is still insisting on basic carriage, and until we can get that resolved, there's really no end to this dispute in sight," Apple said.
Super. Please wipe yesterday's post from your mind and resume poking voodoo dolls of whichever side you believe more at fault in this conflict.
After months of entrenched World War I-style silence where the only thing that happens is the occasional mustard-gas lob at fans or French farmers, the Chicago Tribune reports on a possible thaw in Big Ten-Comcast relations:
Big Ten Network President Mark Silverman said Monday he was "cautiously optimistic" an agreement could be reached with Comcast, the largest cable distributor in the area. The parties began having "productive conversations" in December, Silverman said.
This is a 180 degree shift in rhetoric from the Big Ten Network, which had previously been very blunt about the dim prospects for carriage on any of the major cable providers in the Midwest, and likely heralds a deal soon. (Comcast has maintained all along that "negations were ongoing".) The BTN, of course, has (or had) a vested interest in making grim negotiations look grim so that cable subscribers would jump ship to satellite providers; to publicly announce cautious optimism about a deal would be detrimental to their cause unless it was close indeed.
So, like, hurray for everyone in the footprint; most fans have taken one side or the other but mostly just want the opportunity to watch their teams play. Except for Michigan basketball fans.
What's your No. 1 fear if you subscribe to cable and you're a sports fan? Aside from the signal dying on the first day of the NCAA basketball tournament or on any Saturday or Sunday in the fall, it's that through no fault of your own you might not be able to watch your favorite teams play because of rights disputes between major companies. 
While enduring the Big Ten Network's "Friday Night Tailgate" tonight, something interesting presented itself. They showed a clip of 
The SEC's television contracts are up and there were plenty of rumors that the conference would look to start up an SEC Network that would be much faster than the 
The 
The announcement that Comcast and the Big Ten Network were a week or so away from announcing a carriage deal seemed like a major, major win for the network given the way the Chicago Tribune -- the first source in this third round of "there's gonna be a deal!" stories -- 
Is it make the party time for Big Ten fans? In parts of the Big Ten footprint? And such?
