Big Ten Net Demands Basic Tier
By R. Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 6/24/2007 6:00:00 PM MT
The kickoff of the college-football season is two months away, but Comcast and the Big Ten Network have already begun a media blitz over carriage negotiations.
Big Ten Conference commissioner James Delany and Comcast executive vice president David Cohen butted helmets last week over distribution of the startup service, which will offer live sports events and archival action from such conference teams as Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin and Illinois.
Delany, during a conference call last Thursday with reporters, fired a salvo at the nation's largest cable operator, which had considered taking an ownership stake in the channel before Fox Cable Networks eventually tackled a 49% interest.
He labeled as “disparaging” remarks made by Comcast executive vice president David Cohen in a recent article in The New York Times describing Big Ten Network programming as “second- and third-choice games,” relative to “first-choice” games on other cable and broadcast outlets.
Comcast, which counts 5.7 million customers in the conference's eight-state, 18.5 million-subscriber footprint, wants to place the network on a sports tier because of its high fees. The Big Ten Network, which is proposing a $1.10-per-subscriber monthly licensing fee within Big Ten markets, also seeks basic distribution.
But Delany told reporters that the network, which is charging 10 cents per subscriber for the rest of the country, would only cost Comcast an average of 30 cents across the operator's total digital subscriber base. That's one-tenth of the more than $3 in monthly subscriber fees he says the operator pays ESPN.
But in a letter to Delany dated Thursday night, Cohen refused to back away from his Times comments, saying that the most attractive Big Ten programming is being made available first to ABC and ESPN.
“We are not criticizing the Big Ten for generating a business dispute between the conference and Fox (who are interested in creating a billion-dollar asset for themselves), on the one hand, and Comcast (which is seeking to protect the interests of millions of cable-television customers who do not wish to pay for expensive, niche programming that they will never watch),” said Cohen. “It's only about protecting our customers from a burdensome Big Ten tax.”
Delany told reporters that the Big Ten Network has basic-cable carriage deals with about 40 unnamed operators to go along with its announced pacts with Buckeye CableSystem and DirecTV.
Big Ten Fights for Comcast Carriage
06/21/2007Cover Story: Laughing Matters
11/08/2009Bigger. Better.
09/28/2003
