Reds Fan Since 1971
FWIW, the IU board I go to (oh, what an off-season it's been for my beloved Hoosier Hoops) says this is a patently false rumor, and is only confusion related to DTV shuffling channel assigments and then telling some customers that this will affect the availability of "overflow" Big Ten games. Whatever that means.
That said, put me in the pile with the handful of folks who've joked that they'd like to see the B10 Network flop and go out of business. Not because of any personal animosity towards the conference or its fans (though fall is a trying time, when you'd suddenly swear that OSU *must* be graduating 1.2 million students per year in order to justify the number of people you meet who simply assume that the football game that weekend is at the center of your social schedule)... but just to set a precedent for future ill-gotten attempts to create a network where none need exist.
And then the Big Ten fans have to be smart enough to channel their anger AT THE BIG TEN and not at their service providers. Trying to turn something that's a ten-times-per-year special attraction for most fans into a 365-days-per-year basic cable network is greedy, misguided, and to put it bluntly, retarded. Instead of being lemmings, the fans should rub the conference's nose in its own abject failure while opining "bad doggie." Because thinking a single sports conference is a viable national "brand" and thinking it's a strong enough brand to force the hands of service providers (asking them to shoulder the cost/risk of distributing your content, instead of taking that risk yourself via a syndication network or even -- if you really think you have a product your loyal niche fans will pay for -- a pay-per-view set-up where the free market will insure you are only broadcast in areas and homes where your product is a profitable one) is pretty much the corporate equivalent of dropping a turd in the living room of the very people who make it possible for you to exist.
End rant.
Rick
They may want to go the SEC route. They just signed a huge deal with ESPN for the next 15 years.
http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/59824
Reds Fan Since 1971
So get ESPN GamePlan, which used to have all of the games that are now on Big Ten Network. You get all the games that you wanted anyway, and all of the DirecTV subscribers do not have to subsidize your Big Ten football watching. Seems like the best case scenario to me.
I have no specific knowledge of it, but they must have. I am sure the Big Ten Network isn't cheap.
I have the Sports Pack, GamePlan and FullCourt on DirecTV, so I am not averse to paying for my sports coverage. I AM averse to ESPN (with ESPNU) and the Big Ten Network trying to bully providers into making all of their subscribers pay for something that probably a vast majority of them do not want.
And all of those Big Ten games that are now on the Big Ten Network on Saturday afternoons were always on ESPN+, which essentially distributed the games to the local markets and were on GamePlan for the rest of the country.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't ESPN GamePlan cost like $150? Why would I want to have to pay for that when Big Ten Network is free for Directv customers?
First off, like BRM said I don't think you get every Big Ten game. Second, what is the Big Ten Network costing you? Did they rise prices for which I am unaware of? You know you can just ignore the channel like almost every other one, right?
Exactly
If you don't know if prices have gone u[, why complain about a channel?
But why pay when you can get it for free?
I don't get ESPNU with my package. Did your subscription prices go up?
Yes, but as has been repeated several times Big Ten Network has cost much less than GamePlan and oh, by the way, it carries more than just football games...
You have to look at it from the BTN's perspective. They can't grow to what they aspire to be on a sports tier. They may not even be able to survive.
The BTN realizes they are a sports tier network in most of the country. The problem is that Time Warner and the others want them on a tier in Big Ten country. Most of their audience comes from there, and that's their only chance to get big ad dollars. They have to be on extended basic in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin...
Last edited by guttle11; 08-25-2008 at 08:54 PM.
I wouldn't be surprised if it did. The BTN, I'm sure, charges AT LEAST $1 per subscriber, per month. If DirecTV raised their rates $1 when they picked up the BTN, they very well might reduce them by a buck if the BTN went away.
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