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Bad news on the Pac-12 Network and DirecTV - Printable Version

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Re: Bad news on the Pac-12 Network and DirecTV - Farm93 - 06-15-2012

Garvin,

Stanford was a great team, so it was on TV a lot.  But what about Wazzu, Colorado or Arizona?  Remember seeing all of their Saturday September games on TV?  In the new deal, their OOC games need space on the Pac-12 channel too.  The problem is Saturday is "only" 24 hours long.  The viable Saturday sporting window for western USA teams would be ~11 hours.  (Noon - 11PM Pacific).  So those 11 hours are needed for 10 to 12 OOC games.  So mathematically there is a problem.  Either every game is reduced to 1 hour, or the games need to be spread to other days or channels.

The big networks would take 2 games, so that gets the problem down to 8 (or more) OOC games to play on Pac-12 .  Still only 11 hours.

The conference was going to push one game to Thursday.  That brings the total to 7 (or more) Saturday Pac-12 OOC games.  And that was the problem.  You can't broadcast 7 OOC games live on one channel on Saturday afternoon.

The conference almost certainly looked for volunteers for Friday and SUNDAY kickoffs.  Friday was viable for some games, but not many.  And Friday only has one TV slot anyway (~6 or 7PM).  So that would still leave 6 OOC games for Saturday.

6 * 3.5 hours per game turns to 21 hours.  So either teams were going to kickoff at 5AM or somebody would need to play on Sunday.

But what OOC team would have agreed to play on Sunday?  Probably none of them want to go against the NFL, and their contracts likely specify Saturday.  Also since many of the conference teams play in NFL cities, there would be Pac-12 objections to Sunday too.

Put it this way...There could be 30 games in the conference and SC fans would likely see their games at 1PM on Saturday and conclude there is no problem.  But if the commitment is to put all of the teams on TV live, the problem is that there are too many teams essentially sharing one channel and one afternoon.

The Pac-12 powers likely decided it was time to admit that Saturday has too many games, and that rather than playing games on Sunday some games would be broadcasted on tape delay on Sunday.  That was a good decision.

Given the number on this board that believe Big Game in October is crazy, I am pretty confident those people would object to that 5AM or 9AM Saturday Kickoff with Duke.

Stanford 2012 is ranked high enough that it probably would not have happened to Stanford in 2012, but somebody would be playing at that time.  And given Stanford's limited TV appeal, in some years, I do not really want Stanford to embrace the live at all costs broadcasting model.

Re: Bad news on the Pac-12 Network and DirecTV - CrazedZooChimp - 06-16-2012

(06-15-2012, 01:47 PM)garvin link Wrote:You offer a false set of alternatives. Under the previous TV deal, every single Stanford football game of the past two years was televised live without resorting to goofball scheduling. The main complaint against that contract was that supposed Fox Sports didn't get Stanford or the conference enough exposure. This new deal is clearly a step back in terms of exposure. Outside Northern California, some of our football games will now be airing at 3 a.m. And for basketball it will be a ton of them.

And how many were broadcast the two years before that?  It's fun to imagine we're always going to be a top-10 team, but in reality we won't be, and ABC or ESPN won't be picking up our games, just like they're not picking up Oregon State or Colorado games this year.  More Pac-12 games are going to be on TV this year, that's a fact.  And all but a tiny number of those are going to be on TV everywhere in the country thanks to ONE extra channel, and all will be available in places that get a regional channel (which I bet will be most locations you can buy an extra sports package) or places that have internet access.  That's an increase in conference exposure.

Re: Bad news on the Pac-12 Network and DirecTV - oman - 06-16-2012

I realize that the Longhorn Network is kind of a special case, and I am a bit snake bit, but I don't see how any of this doesn't mean more trouble for catching games for those of us outside the west coast in the short run.  In the long run, I think it probably is good as the kinks are worked through.