The PAC-10 Channel Is Doomed To Fail
by BSD on Aug 2, 2010 8:01 AM EDT
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By all accounts, the Big Ten Network has been a smashing success. It has provided piles of cash for the Big Ten member schools that has become the envy of all the other BCS conferences. The BTN put the Big Ten in the driver's seat during the summer of conference expansion.
Now that the PAC-10 has picked up two members, they too are starting to talk about launching their own television network. But if you ask me, PAC-10 commissioner Larry Scott has a fatal flaw in his plan. (emphasis added)
That is no surprise. With two major universities in each of five Western states, and the addition of Colorado and Utah in 2011 or 2012, the conference can better brand itself (Pac-12) and create a profitable asset. But Scott wants to diverge somewhat from the strategy that the Big Ten followed when it carved out a schedule of football and basketball games for its network from the rights it sold to ESPN in a long-term extension.
"We’re not that far along in our planning," Scott said.
But his goal is to have "more premier programming" than the "third-tier" games he said were on the Big Ten Network. The selection process for Big Ten football games greatly favors putting better games with greater ratings potential on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC.
There was once a time when boxing was a premier sport in America. I can remember watching guys like Sugar Ray Leonard, Mike Tyson, Tommy "Hitman" Hearns, Roberto Duran, and Marvin Haglar routinely boxing on ABC and ESPN. These were the premier boxers of their generation. But then in the late '80s boxing made a fundamental mistake. They started putting all of ther championship fights on pay-per-view, and now 20 years later nobody watches boxing anymore.
Larry Scott's plan will hurt the PAC-10. He fails to realize the appeal of the Big Ten Network. The BTN allows fans to see games that have no chance of being televised on ESPN or ABC. Before the BTN came along, if Penn State was playing Coastal Carolina there was probably a 50/50 chance that ESPN2 might put it on regional coverage. If you lived in Texas, there was no chance you were going to see that game on television in your area. But the BTN has opened up that opportunity. For schools like Indiana and Minnesota the BTN has been tremendous in opening up access for their fans to see the games because before the BTN the only time they saw their team on television was when they were being blown out by Michigan or Ohio State.
If Scott pushes to put premier games on his network, the PAC-10 (or PAC-12) Channel will fail. The only people who will see the premier conference games will be people who order the channel. The PAC-10 brand will be weakened nationwide because they will not be getting national exposure on ABC and ESPN. This will hurt their recruiting. Fans of schools like Washington State and Oregon State will not see as much benefit from the channel because their games will not get precedence over USC, UCLA, and Oregon.
The Big Ten Network has a model that has proven to work beyond anyone's expectations. Larry Scott and the PAC-10 choose to deviate from it at their own peril.
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Has Scott actually said this...
or is this all talk at this point. Notice the sentence right before the bolded area.
I imagine that they will see the light. Even if they do try to go into that area and put “key games” on the network, it will be at a small level. To them, the Civil War is premier and they may want that on their channel instead of showing it on Versus late at night.
Computers rank me number 1, blame the BCS...it's their fault.-Joe Budden
Beyond the whole exposure argument, this plan would hurt their existing media contracts.
Basically the Big 10 created money out of thin air by finding a market for games that no one wanted to broadcast. The Pac-10 Network would be broadcasting games that already have a high demand. Basically it would be pumping up the value of their network at the expense of their other TV contracts. Right now, the Big 10 Network doesn’t hurt (and probably helps us) in negotiating deals with ESPN and the like. The Pac-10 Network, under this proposal, would certainly hurt the Pac-10 in any similar negotiations.
Bingo.
Instead of identifying a way to make additional revenue off the bottom of the barrell games (with the brilliant caveat that each team must play some conference games on the network, making people outside the footprint have to subscribe), this feels a little too left-pocket-right-pocket to me. Are they making more money? Or just losing money on the mainstream TV contracts and shifting it to their own network. Meh.
I think it’s more about negotiating. By threatening to pull first choice games off of their “regular” media deal, the Pac-10/12 can instead offer to include those games if ABC/ESPN/Fox Sportsnet/whatever tosses in a bunch more money. I don’t think that the Pac-10/12 seriously thinks that not having a big presence on ABC/ESPN is a good thing. Especially since the Pac-10/12 isn’t exactly full of premier programs with huge followings — this limits how many games are really “most premier” anyway.
It's all a ploy.
What non-third tier games does the Pac-10 generate? USC v. jaOSU? That’s not a Pac-10 game, and no way we let that be exclusive to the P10N. Oregon v USC? Nobody gives a shit. That’s a second tier game. The ONLY top tier games the Pac 10 plays are their OOC games, plus a very occasional good Cal versus USC game.
"Every player we have, someone-maybe a parent, a grandparent, someone-poured their soul into that young man. They are handing that young man off to us. They are giving us their treasure, and it's our job to make sure we give them back that young man intact and ready to face the world."
-J.V.Pa.
The folks at Versus are offended.
"Nothing turns me on like doe estrus." - ReadingRambler
by leeharvey418 on Aug 2, 2010 11:14 AM EDT up reply actions
Gary Bettman doesn't know what you're talking about.
Friend of the Pants since 2009.
by ReadingRambler on Aug 2, 2010 12:21 PM EDT up reply actions
In Versus's defense
they broadcast the USC-Oregon State game in 2006. That was worth every minute.
My kingdom for a spellchecker. Or Devin Harris. Hopefully both.
by OBrienSchofieldismyHero on Aug 2, 2010 4:55 PM EDT up reply actions
They are. The Pac-10/12 along with the Big 12, has a crappy TV contract in terms of distribution. “Third tier” games for the Pac-10 currently are carride only locally on whatever local regional sports network is on in the area. That means that some people in Oregon aren’t even able to see, say, a conference game like Arizona/Stanford because it’s not carried in that area. A conference based Tv network would actually help a ton in distribution for such games, even if said network is only carried on systems on the West Coast.
That said, the basic problem here is that demand for Pac-10/12 games just isn’t high. The schools tend to be smaller with smaller fan bases, sports interest just isn’t as high on the West Coast and the population base isn’t all that high either (yeah, there’s California, but the rest of the states are basically one big city and a lot of sparsely populated areas).
As opposed to California
…which is five or six big cities and a lot of sparsely populated areas.
"Nothing turns me on like doe estrus." - ReadingRambler
by leeharvey418 on Aug 2, 2010 11:25 AM EDT up reply actions
You're right on the interest level Laaazzz
I’ve lived in SoCal for 20 years now and there’s not the same enthusiasm for college football that you find in the Big Ten, SEC or Tex/Oklahoma. The sports bars here are dominated by Big Ten alums.
by Frank O'Brien on Aug 2, 2010 11:42 AM EDT up reply actions
I'm cornfused...
With two major universities in each of five Western states, and the addition of Colorado and Utah in 2011 or 2012…
When did California split into two separate states?
"Nothing turns me on like doe estrus." - ReadingRambler
Northern California and Southern California must be different states. They are very different areas.
Nitpickerry
The SF Bay Area and Hollywood are insane. The rest of LA is just a normal big city, except really, really big. And San Diego is a Navy town attached to a tourist trap with a bit of high-tech industry mixed in for fun (and where no one who can pay the rent will leave willingly).
Yeah...
We have daily high speed car chases with armed suspects, a fleet of police choppers that could take over a small country, and riots, so many riots over things from racial issues to sports championships all the time here out east.
Black Shoe Diaries, SB Nation Pittsburgh
God Created the World Out Of Nothing, Paterno Built A National Superpower On Cow Fields...
From its inception...
was the Big Ten Network’s long term plan to only show third tier games and non-rev sports and other non-live events?
Or was the plan to get the BTN in distribution in the footprint (1), make it viable/profitable (2), then expand nationwide (3), then bring the top tier games home to the BTN (4), then world domination(5)?
The Pac10 looks to be jumping at #4 forgetting that 1,2,3 are needed to get to #4. They probably haven’t even dreamed of #5. Larry Scott is no evil genius.
One man doing the work of 100's for the good of 1000's
by rahpsu92 on Aug 2, 2010 12:03 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
You're probably about right.
I think the plan was always to get the lesser schools more coverage, because that helps recruiting, making them less lesser. Then, you establish the network in the major markets in the Big Ten footprint, expand the Big Ten footprint, etc. Then domination. Make no mistake, the BTN was always intended to expand, and Delaney knew that expansion meant conference expansion.
But, returning to the original point of this little ramble, yes – third tier games were always the foundation of what the BTN would become.
"Every player we have, someone-maybe a parent, a grandparent, someone-poured their soul into that young man. They are handing that young man off to us. They are giving us their treasure, and it's our job to make sure we give them back that young man intact and ready to face the world."
-J.V.Pa.
Hoops
I think it’s also important to realize that this basically just applies to football. for basketball, a number of good games each year used to not be carried by CBS/ESPN — now, the BTN carries a number of good, high profile games each season. And there’s a lot of basketball programming on and it’s on pretty frequently.
Amen brutha
The revolution will be televised and we’ll all be picking and choosing what we want off the interwebs as opposed to forcefeeding we currently get from the MSM. It’s a matter of working out the fee structure. The NFL will do it first and megaDelany has a leg up on getting the Big Twelven out there before the rest of college football.
by Frank O'Brien on Aug 2, 2010 12:25 PM EDT up reply actions
It may work.
The Pac-10 is probably the least-tiered conference in football.
You can pretty easily separate “good” matchups from “bad” in the other conferences. Of these pairings, I’d rather watch the first of these matchups than the latter:
Ohio State-Penn State, Indiana-Northwestern
Miami-Florida State, Duke-Maryland
Texas-Oklahoma, Baylor-Iowa State
West Virginia-Pitt, UConn-South Florida
Florida-Alabama, Vanderbilt-Kentucky
This is all conjecture, but I feel the Pac-10’s matchups are pretty even. USC-Oregon may be their premier matchup, but it doesn’t hold up to the rest of the matchups I’ve listed in terms of viewing interest.
On the flip side, I’d think their worst matchup of Arizona-Washington State would probably draw in more national interest than any of the latter games I’ve listed.
If they market it effectively, they can do it. Hold on to the rights for USC-Oregon and then sell the next best matchups to ESPN. It could be a fairly tempting option.
Oh come now
Duke-Maryland sounds like high times.
Now where’d I put my Bum Fight DVD collection?…
"Nothing turns me on like doe estrus." - ReadingRambler
Holding out the best not the answer
to building a conference network. A movie trailer does not show snippets of the worst or most boring scenes of a movie, that would be counterproductive. Broadcasting (ABC-ESPN) the best is the only way to get non-hardcore viewers to look at the rest.
Anyone interested enough in a conference network will not be joining to get the “high tiered” games… they will already be hooked and will watch “any tiered” games.
I agree
The MWC’s TV deal puts sometimes the best game on The Mtn which gets seen by no one since distribution is so small. I agree that better programming is better maybe sometimes but not all the time.
Mountain West Connection The best site for MWC sports!
"Third tier" may have not been the best wording
I think he was stating that the PAC 10 network would hold on to the rights to the top games, unlike the Big 10 that acts like a catch all.
Larry Scott is trowing ideas around to see what sticks. Like he did with expansion. Some will land, some won’t. In the end a balance is reached that makes most happy.
A balance that will likely involve some hemming and hawing as ESPN and Fox bid on the PAC 10’s TV rights that are up for negotiation next spring. Eventually the total will reach a point where it is clear that the top games are worth more to the networks than an upstart can produce.
Or the PAC 10 will start their own network with their best teams and games. Utah should help that marketability a bit I would like to think.
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