Big Ten Network
by George Winslow -- Multichannel News, 2/10/2008 5:00:00 PM MT
While the costs and complexities of producing live sporting events had traditionally made it difficult for smaller sports networks to ramp up HD production, the Big Ten Conference and Fox Cable Networks have made HD programming the centerpiece of their co-owned Big Ten Network.
“We designed the network from the start to be completely in high-definition,” said the BTN executive producer Leon Schweir. “In our first year, we’ll have 1,000 hours. We’ll have over 400 games this year, with about 90% in HD. Pretty much the only non-high-def [fare] we have is from third parties.”
The channel is trying to break new ground by moving beyond high-profile men’s football and basketball games into HD coverage of such Olympic sports as soccer, volleyball, gymnastics and lacrosse.
It also has an extensive slate of studio-based HD fare each week and is creating such long-form documentaries as Minnesota Basketball: The Journey in HD.
To handle that load, the network has built a multimillion dollar studio in Chicago and set up mini-studios on Big Ten campuses for interviews. It has long-term leases on several HD trucks and typically employs about 95 people to cover events, which swells to over 150 during the football season.
Covering such a high volume of sporting events in HD is costly and challenging. “During the course of a weekend, we may go from a basketball arena that has its own satellite uplink to a lacrosse match that may not be connected to any venue or facility,” Schweir said. “We are also depending on a number of vendors in different states using different formats.”
Fortunately, HD production costs continue to fall. “When you are designed from the ground up to be in HD, the cost is incrementally reasonable,” he said.
Launching a new network with such ambitious HD plans is a costly affair, however, and some of the largest operators have balked at the idea of adding another expensive sports network to their basic tier.
Even so, BTN was the first network to hit 30 million subscriber homes within 30 days after launch. It has carriage deals with DirecTV, Dish, AT&T, Verizon Communications, Insight Communications, WideOpenWest, RCN, Service Electric and over 180 smaller operators.
It has yet to ink deals with Comcast and the six largest operators, with Comcast insisting on putting the network on a sports tier.
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