Cable Gets Ready For College Football
Upstart and National Networks Face Crowded Field, Ratings Dip
By R. Thomas Umstead & Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 8/19/2007 8:00:00 PM
The upstart Big Ten Network will strap on its helmet next month and join a crowded field of national sports cable networks offering live college football games this fall.
The network — co-owned by Fox Sports and the Big Ten Conference — will join national cable sports networks ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, CSTV, Versus, Fox Sports Net and The mtn. – Mountain West Sports Network — in offering more than 500 live college football games this season.
Network executives say they’re not concerned about an oversaturation of the sport despite so many primarily Saturday afternoon games in the market.
“There certainly is a lot more [college football] out there than there’s ever been, and I think it will continue to grow; but the bottom line is fans of the schools will find their teams,” CSTV executive vice president of content Tim Pernetti said.
“I think it’s certainly created a challenge because in the ratings environment, everyone says college football ratings are declining. I don’t think people are watching less college football, I just think there are just more options. It’s the same or even bigger audience out there, but they’re spread much wider across a lot of different outlets.”
Networks are trying to differentiate their on-air presentation of the games by taking advantage of new technologies such as video on demand and high definition. Big Ten Network executives say the 17 million-subscriber network will offer the majority of its games in HD, while CSTV will make available replays of its Saturday afternoon telecasts through its VOD services.
Others such as Fox Sports Net and Versus, say delivering the x’s and o’s in an informative manner is what the sports fans are looking for.
“Sometimes it’s refreshing to have straightforward, good hardcore coverage of events,” said Versus senior vice president of programming and production Marc Fein.
Below is a snapshot of what cable networks are carrying with regards to live college football programming.
ESPN, ESPN2, ABC
By just about any Nielsen measure, 2006 was a banner college football season for ESPN and ESPN2 and broadcast brethren ABC.
Try these stats on for size: ESPN’s most-viewed season since 1994 and highest-rated since 1999; ESPN2’s highest rated and most-viewed season ever; and ESPN on ABC’s most-viewed season since 1996 and highest-rated campaign since 1999. Moreover, ESPN notched its two most-watched games ever: 6.33 million households for Florida State/Miami on Sept. 4 and 4.92 million for the Nov. 2 Thursday night affair between Louisville/West Virginia.
So given that legacy, what does the king of TV college football do for an encore in 2007-08? In conjunction with ESPN Regional Television’s 85 syndicated matchups, more than 140 games on out-of-market package ESPN Game Plan, and with contests on every day of the week (counting Labor Day), the three Disney networks and their myriad platforms will present more than 400 college gridiron tilts this year.
“All the surveys we’ve conducted show that interest in college football is really growing. The passion of college football fans is unrivaled,” said ESPN vice president of programming and acquisitions Dave Brown, noting that each contest carries major implications. “The regular season here is the most meaningful of any American sport.”
As part of a new multiyear pact with ABC for the Pac 10 and a sublicensing deal with FSN for a number of Big 12 games, ESPN this season will present home games from all six conferences that vie for a Bowl Championship Series bid.
For its part, ESPN360 is the place for plenty of highlights and streaming game action. Indeed, the revamped broadband service, which officials say is now available to 15 million homes, will offer more than 250 games, including exclusive contests.
For the second consecutive year, all of the games on ESPN and ESPN2 will be shot in HD, according to Brown.
Then, there was what Brown called the “renewal” for Saturday night on ABC. “We really exceeded expectations,” he said, pointing to a package that averaged 7.89 million viewers, including six outright wins in all of television among total viewers and among adults 18 to 49.
But ABC isn’t home alone on Saturday nights — ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU are also in the mix. “We’re looking to maximize audience and switch viewers back and forth between the games,” he said.
BIG TEN NETWORK
The inaugural season for the Big Ten Network will feature 38 live college football games beginning Sept. 1, according to Mike Feller, vice president of programming.
While the network — which counts DirecTV and several small operators as its distribution affiliates — knows what its schedule of games will be for the first three weeks of the season, it will have a six to 12-day window to determine its schedule each week for the remainder of the year — a tough obstacle for an upstart network.
“Those games will be selected on a rolling basis at ABC’s discretion,” said Leon Schweir, executive producer. “We’re pretty ambitious as to what we want to do for our pre-game and game settings, so it’s nice to have the first few weeks where we can plan right down to dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, and then hopefully we have it down where we can be flexible.”
As for its ambitious coverage, the network is planning to have a major presence at the home teams’ college campuses. “Our games are all in the Big Ten so we’ll have a live studio show and we’ll be live at various campuses on game day,” Schweir said. “We’ll show a lot of the atmosphere around the campuses throughout the game.”
As for the live games, Feller said the network will offer state-of-art coverage of each game, with nearly all the games offered in HD, including pre- and post-game telecasts.
“Big Ten fans will enjoy the whole atmosphere of Big Ten football,” he said. “When the game is over we’re talking about Big Ten football — we’re not switching to another game in another conference. That kind of football coverage is something that will be showcased all week long.”
Feller said the network will offer regional coverage of its Saturday afternoon telecasts.
“We’ll designate a certain game for a certain pocket of the country, and as the day progresses we’ll see which games become potential upsets, and we’ll decide if we should break and take the audience away into another game,” he said. “The games themselves will dictate how we’re going to go about doing this, but we have the capability to move people around and we’re going to take advantage of it.”
FSN
For the 2007 college football season, FSN — the cable home for the Big 12 (18 games) and Pac-10 (13) conferences — has mapped out a game plan featuring a greater selection of HD contests and other compelling on-air features.
Whereas FSN last season presented one game per week in HD, Doug Sellars, executive vice president and executive producer, said the network, which reaches 82 million homes through FSN owned and affiliated regional sports channels, will offer 28 of its 31-game schedule in HD.
“The three games where we won’t be in HD come down to logistical issues. There’s still just so much equipment and trucks, what with baseball and other networks like ESPN and Versus also showing the game in HD,” said Sellars. “Today’s fans want to see the games in HD, so it’s incumbent upon us to give them what they want.”
Sellars also expects that once fans get more of a taste of FSN’s X-MO camera, they’re going to want to catch more looks from the super slow motion device.
“We’ve used it on boxing and a fair bit with college football last year. We’re going to expand it this season,” said Sellars. “It’s really something to see when someone makes a tackle in the open field.”
While FSN begins its season Sept. 1 with a quadruple-header, including preseason No. 1 USC hosting Idaho at 10:15 p.m. (ET) and appearances by other title contenders UCLA and Oklahoma, its typical schedule will feature a trio of two games per Saturday through Nov. 24.
The network starts its coverage with the 30-minute Kyocera College Football Saturday Kickoff, hosted by Mike Goldberg and analyst D’Marco Farr. FSN tosses matters back to that crew between games and to provide updates and highlights.
In addition to continuing to present game sponsorships packages with Kyocera and Dr. Pepper, FSN has hit Hitachi up for a title sponsorship of its halftime show. The deal includes the integration of seven state-of-the-art Hitachi plasma TVs on the set, presenting sponsor benefits for 13 of the net’s HD telecasts and positioning against the college football scoreboard on FoxSports.com on MSN.
CSTV
In its fifth season of college football coverage, CBS-owned CSTV will roll out a lineup of 45 live games across a several college conferences, including the Mountain West Conference and Conference USA, as well as a package of games from historically black colleges and universities. The more than 21 million-subscriber network also includes a lineup of Navy home games.
“We take pride in providing an opportunity in college football for schools and conferences of all levels to be provided TV exposure,” said Pernetti. “Fans will get a taste of college football at every level as part of our package, and that’s not something you see on every network.”
The network will also take fans as close to the game as possible, offering coverage during games from inside the locker rooms, as well as live audio feeds from field level within NCAA rules. “We’re really going to push the envelope in every way we can,” he said.
While the network won’t telecast many games in HD this year, it will offer affiliates a robust on-demand lineup featuring hundreds of hours a month of full game replays and highlights packages. The network also offers a package of live games via its CSTV.com Web site.
“Our mission has been, 'Let’s provide our content in more ways than anybody else can,’” he said. “So you choose to watch the Navy-Rutgers football game on demand, or Cal-Colorado State on TV or the North California-East California game on our game tracker, which is on our real-time live, statistical play-by-play service that we offer on our official athletic site of both of those schools,” Pernetti said. “At CSTV, television is one piece of the fan experience — we’re trying to make it available as many ways as we can.”
VERSUS
Versus is entering its sophomore season of college football coverage with more than double the nine games the 72-million subscriber network offered last year.
The network added a package of Pac-10 games to last year’s lineup of Mountain West games to give them 19 live telecasts this season, according to network president Gavin Harvey.
Known mostly for its National Hockey League, Tour De France and bull riding content, Harvey says the network sees college football as one of its most important franchises. With the anticipation that more than half the network’s game telecasts will feature ranked teams, Harvey hopes the addition of Pac-10 contests will help the network increase last year’s 0.2 rating for college football telecasts.
“College football is an absolute blue chip area to get into and it’s got the kind of fans that we like — rabidly fanatical and passionate about the sport,” Harvey said. “We think there’s a lot of fans behind it, so each football game is an event in and of itself and we think it fits our brand.”
Harvey said the network won’t jazz up its college football telecasts with a lot of technological bells and whistles — instead focusing more on informative and action-packed coverage to bring in fans.
“The first step for us is to gain the respect of the fan,” Harvey said. “We want to focus on what the fan wants to see and not trying to create a big network attitude.”
What the network will do this season is telecast five Saturday night Pac-10 games in HD on its shared Versus/Golf Channel HD service. But unlike the NHL, it will not offer any live games via the Web.
Harvey said the network will continue to be aggressive in the college football acquisition arena. “We plan to be a factor in college football television for some time to come,” he said
ESPNU
During its third football season, 24-hour college sports network ESPNU will present 70 live exclusive games, up from 67 in 2006. Averaging about five contests per week, the schedule begins with Murray State at Louisville on Thursday Aug. 30 at 8 p.m. Typically, Saturday rosters will include games at noon, 3:30 p.m. and 7 p.m., with a tape-delayed Division 1-AA matchup at 10 p.m.
ESPNU vice president and general manager Burke Magnus said more viewers than ever will be able to check in on the action, as the network will soon cross the 20-million subscriber plateau, owing to carriage on Time Warner Cable systems.
“Time Warner is looking to launch us around or before Labor Day weekend,” he said. “The start of football season is really a focus.”
The network, which will feature contests from the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big East, Big Ten, Mid-American Conference, Southwestern Athletic Conference and Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference circuits, has some new faces in the booth: Mike Gottfried makes the full-time move from ESPN, while Larry Coker will serve as an analyst, evaluating his former Miami University team in their first contest under new coach Randy Shannon against Marshall Sept. 1.
ESPNU also has a four-pack of studio shows to supplement its game lineup. SportsCenterU supplies pre- and post-game coverage to the Thursday and Saturday slate. Starting Sept. 10, ESPNU Inside the Polls breaks down the ranked teams, while ESPN Coaches Spotlight provides four hours of press conferences on Tuesdays. ESPNU Recruiting Insider is a 30-minute Friday night show assessing the top high school talent from around the country, which also serves as a lead-in to the network’s prep school contest at 8 p.m.
“We showcase blue-chip teams and games from football hotbeds like Texas, Florida, California, Pennsylvania and Ohio,” said Magnus.
As for HD, Magnus said ESPNU will take the enhanced format plunge next season. “We won’t need much of a learning curve with all the HD games on ESPN and ESPN2,” he said.
Some collegians will get a chance to accelerate their education as ESPNU, which already uses students as sideline reporters, will give underclassmen a chance to announce games.
“It will be in mid-season,” said Magnus. “There are schools with real sophisticated communications and broadcast curricula.”
THE MTN.
Mountain West Sports Network will air 30 live college football conference games this fall, and will replay an additional 22 conference games aired on Versus and CSTV, according to Steve Hurlbut, executive producer and director of programming for the 1.2 million subscriber network.
The network will also develop pre- and postgame shows around its live telecasts, as well as preview each Saturday’s games on its weekly Friday night, Dodge-sponsored show, The Mountain View, Hurlbut said.
“What we’re doing is part of our unique commitment that’s part of our sole focus on the Mountain West Conference,” he said. “There isn’t anyplace whether its print, radio or television that they can find the amount of in-depth coverage we provide for the conference’s college football games.”
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