American Sports Network I watch a little bit of it since I cut the cord.
It seems like every major network has three channels like ABC,Local weather and some odd channel.
The other networks have bounce, comet ,grit and QVC among others.
These sub-channels have to be very cheap to broadcast on.
ASN is on these type channels why not make it regional.
If my local ABC station can have their own weather channel why not local athletic conferences.
Certain times of day run QVC during typical game times run the sports programming.
A group of conferences could string together a network available over the air.

ASN seemed like it could be better with less hockey here in South Carolina and more regional college games.

(03-17-2017 07:54 PM)MJG Wrote:  American Sports Network I watch a little bit of it since I cut the cord.
It seems like every major network has three channels like ABC,Local weather and some odd channel.
The other networks have bounce, comet ,grit and QVC among others.
These sub-channels have to be very cheap to broadcast on.
ASN is on these type channels why not make it regional.
If my local ABC station can have their own weather channel why not local athletic conferences.
Certain times of day run QVC during typical game times run the sports programming.
A group of conferences could string together a network available over the air.

ASN seemed like it could be better with less hockey here in South Carolina and more regional college games.

Sports are expensive! But yes they could. However, those sub-channels usually aren't carried on cable so there is a limited audience.

In Atlanta some of the major stations have no sub-channels. Some have 2 or 3. Some of the non-network channels have as many as 20. I can get 66 channels with an indoor antenna from 17 different stations. Counting low power, there are 107 channels in the area from 28 stations, so with an external antenna I could be in triple digits without cable.

It's not confirmed yet, but there was another thread recently that ASN may be shut down soon. It's actually a bit on the expensive side to run, it requires a live master control operator at each affiliate to switch the local commercials.

In Little Rock we have some stations carrying up to four channels (actually have one religious station that does three video and four audio channels) and a couple that don't do any sub channels.

Our Sinclair station was hit or miss about carrying ASN content, some weeks they would carry, some weeks they didn't and when they did some of the game selections were... weird. One weekend I switched to antenna because I knew UNT was on ASN and the Little Rock station was carrying a Division III game out of Iowa. Another weekend I see a tweet about a CUSA game on ASN being a barnburner, switch to antenna and they are carrying a game involving Wagner.

AState got picked up for a game, I check the program guide from the TV Guide app and it doesn't show the game. Email the station and they said yes it will be on but they had elected to stop carrying ASN and had reported the schedule then when ASN added the game they made arrangements to carry it but the guides hadn't all updated.

All that said.

All over the country there are guys contracting with local cable providers to show local sports as well as colleges streaming their own content, have to figure at some point people take a flyer on broadcasting games this way locally.

ASN is out of business, College Insiders that streams on the internet is picking up their content

(03-18-2017 07:31 AM)Hilltop75 Wrote:  ASN is out of the sports business, College Insiders that streams on the internet is picking up some of their content

First I appreciate no internet douche bags pointing out I forgot to ask a question.

My thinking could something like ASN work better and help the smaller conferences.
I was thinking a sort of network using sub-channels for the two-thirds of the conferences that don't make any T.V. money.

Here is an example have the Big South, SoCon, SBC and CUSA all buy a T.V. truck.
WKU plays at ODU Put that game on in that region and picks it up digitally.
If The SEC game is Ole Miss vs Vanderbilt then some people might switch their input and watch the CUSA game. The schools involved fans would and some conference member fans.
The Big South or SoCon could do the same and if advertized might eventually get a decent audience.
The basketball season have two games a night with the conferences working together.
So each conference has designated time slots or at least designated nights.
Treat it as a big infomercial like these channels show anyway .

The games could be picked up by any current digital network the conference already have.
The Sub-channel could go back to being an old movie/weather channel when no games are playing live.Hockey and baseball could be added depending on the region.

Who are you calling a douche bag ?

It's hardly free to pump an OTA signal out of a TV tower. Those things use a lot of power.

And then, you're not getting any subscriber fees.


You have to convince advertisers that your content is going to get X viewers, and thus they should pay Y for the ad slots.

Yes, it could be done. But I think that it isn't already being done widely is your answer: it's just not that lucrative.

(03-18-2017 11:53 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  It's hardly free to pump an OTA signal out of a TV tower. Those things use a lot of power.

And then, you're not getting any subscriber fees.


You have to convince advertisers that your content is going to get X viewers, and thus they should pay Y for the ad slots.

Yes, it could be done. But I think that it isn't already being done widely is your answer: it's just not that lucrative.

Except that the main channel is getting sub fees and also that there isn't any additional power needed for the sub-channels. The same signal is either not divided or divided up into several sub-channels from the same 19 Mbit/s signal.

Usually, the sub-channel networks pay the affiliate station to be on the sub-channel but its up to the networks like LAFF, Grit, MeTV...etc to sell the ads on their network.

Well, if I'm wrong I'm wrong, but I think a big part of your argument hinges on the idea that, for example, HDTV OTA channel 5.1 is a "main" channel that "owns" every "sub" channel (5.2, 5.3, 5.4, etc.), and that it doesn't cost anything more to put a different show on 5.2, for the main station already paying for the 5.1 channel.

I don't think it works that way, at all.

(03-18-2017 12:54 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  Well, if I'm wrong I'm wrong, but I think a big part of your argument hinges on the idea that, for example, HDTV OTA channel 5.1 is a "main" channel that "owns" every "sub" channel (5.2, 5.3, 5.4, etc.), and that it doesn't cost anything more to put a different show on 5.2, for the main station already paying for the 5.1 channel.

I don't think it works that way, at all.

Oh yeah, it totally works that way. The subchannels are all just different chunks of data broadcast out over the same channel. It's all digital. There isn't even a set number of subchannels, it just depends on how willing to compress you are.

But you're also right about it not being too lucrative.

(03-18-2017 01:25 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  In Little Rock we have some stations carrying up to four channels (actually have one religious station that does three video and four audio channels) and a couple that don't do any sub channels.

Our Sinclair station was hit or miss about carrying ASN content, some weeks they would carry, some weeks they didn't and when they did some of the game selections were... weird. One weekend I switched to antenna because I knew UNT was on ASN and the Little Rock station was carrying a Division III game out of Iowa. Another weekend I see a tweet about a CUSA game on ASN being a barnburner, switch to antenna and they are carrying a game involving Wagner.

AState got picked up for a game, I check the program guide from the TV Guide app and it doesn't show the game. Email the station and they said yes it will be on but they had elected to stop carrying ASN and had reported the schedule then when ASN added the game they made arrangements to carry it but the guides hadn't all updated.

All that said.

All over the country there are guys contracting with local cable providers to show local sports as well as colleges streaming their own content, have to figure at some point people take a flyer on broadcasting games this way locally.

The key is eliminating the middle man. If a G5 does its own digital network---there's your base coverage. Sell off your T-1 15-20 game rights package to ESPN or another national network. Then, you simply become your own syndicator selling the digital production feed for all the other games to local networks within the footprint. Do something like the old Raycom where the local networks own "X number" of commercials an hour and the G5 conference gets the rest. At 5 dollars--any season ticket holder is likely to also buy the digital coverage---that's nearly a half a million. In fact---why not simply add the digital package for "free" to season ticket holders (but you are really just adding $5 dollars to the season ticket price). If you do shoe string productions largely done by the home school at ESPN-3 level quality-using local on air talent (maybe even the home team radio play by play)--that might be doable. The syndication simply is for exposure----though it might bring in a few extra incremental dollars from ad income.

I think you could probably build a pretty nice regional network of afflliates. Between the easy to afford digital subscription fee, digital ads, and syndicated ad income---you'd probably do ok.

(03-17-2017 10:11 PM)CenterSquarEd Wrote:  It's not confirmed yet, but there was another thread recently that ASN may be shut down soon. It's actually a bit on the expensive side to run, it requires a live master control operator at each affiliate to switch the local commercials.

I'm seeing Cornell vs Harvard in hockey now via Tuff TV showing from ASN.

(03-18-2017 02:18 PM)CenterSquarEd Wrote:  

(03-18-2017 12:54 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  Well, if I'm wrong I'm wrong, but I think a big part of your argument hinges on the idea that, for example, HDTV OTA channel 5.1 is a "main" channel that "owns" every "sub" channel (5.2, 5.3, 5.4, etc.), and that it doesn't cost anything more to put a different show on 5.2, for the main station already paying for the 5.1 channel.

I don't think it works that way, at all.

Oh yeah, it totally works that way. The subchannels are all just different chunks of data broadcast out over the same channel. It's all digital. There isn't even a set number of subchannels, it just depends on how willing to compress you are.

But you're also right about it not being too lucrative.

Yep. Saw an ASN hoops telecast in Little Rock that was shown in 480i horrible. Little video box floating on a mostly black screen.

Basically to do an ad hoc network you have to make the station whole, pay them more than they would get from GRIT or Comet or Laff and hopefully generate enough ad revenue to cover that cost and production costs or at least enough so the school is no worse off than what they spend self-producing for ESPN3.

(03-18-2017 08:34 AM)JHS55 Wrote:  Who are you calling a douche bag ?

No one I got distracted made a dumb mistake and no one derailed the thread by pointing it out.

cutting the cord is growing in popularity but antenna TV isn't always part of it.
The good thing is its almost free and you don't have to cut the cord to use an antenna.
If an ASN type network was more local like 6-8 states tops and only showed live games it might work.
Most of a football Saturday and maybe five hours a night during basketball season.
The sub-channel could advertise during the games helping to increase their regular audience.
All the network would have to do is make up the revenue grit or bounce make during those time slots.
Offering commercials for Bounce would help the channel a little.
The key would be having consistent programming like M-Sa night basketball and fourteen to fifteen football Saturdays.
Couple it with digital networks and advertise for them on the OTA network even ESPN3.
I remember when MTV and ESPN started half their commercials were for themselves.

(03-18-2017 11:07 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Yep. Saw an ASN hoops telecast in Little Rock that was shown in 480i horrible. Little video box floating on a mostly black screen.

Basically to do an ad hoc network you have to make the station whole, pay them more than they would get from GRIT or Comet or Laff and hopefully generate enough ad revenue to cover that cost and production costs or at least enough so the school is no worse off than what they spend self-producing for ESPN3.

The subchannels are more useful in smaller markets that don't have the full complement of TV stations. In Utica, NY, channel 2.1 is NBC, 2.2 is CBS, 2.3 is The CW, and they even manage a 2.4 with one of those national feeds. The ABC affiliate also carries MyNetworkTV. Then they've got a Fox and a PBS and that's it.

With spectrum buybacks for mobile data being a thing, we could see more of that in the future. Sometimes it's more lucrative for a TV station to sell their license than to stay in business.

If OTA TV ever switches to the ATSC 3.0 standard, we could get even more data into the same amount of spectrum. The new standard, still being developed, would actually be IP-based. I'm not sure if the mobile phone vendors would like this, but there's no technical reason that the antennas inside of phones couldn't pick up ATSC 3.0 TV.

So the market is still contracting, but there are some interesting opportunities.

(03-19-2017 07:54 AM)CenterSquarEd Wrote:  

(03-18-2017 11:07 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Yep. Saw an ASN hoops telecast in Little Rock that was shown in 480i horrible. Little video box floating on a mostly black screen.

Basically to do an ad hoc network you have to make the station whole, pay them more than they would get from GRIT or Comet or Laff and hopefully generate enough ad revenue to cover that cost and production costs or at least enough so the school is no worse off than what they spend self-producing for ESPN3.

The subchannels are more useful in smaller markets that don't have the full complement of TV stations. In Utica, NY, channel 2.1 is NBC, 2.2 is CBS, 2.3 is The CW, and they even manage a 2.4 with one of those national feeds. The ABC affiliate also carries MyNetworkTV. Then they've got a Fox and a PBS and that's it.

With spectrum buybacks for mobile data being a thing, we could see more of that in the future. Sometimes it's more lucrative for a TV station to sell their license than to stay in business.

If OTA TV ever switches to the ATSC 3.0 standard, we could get even more data into the same amount of spectrum. The new standard, still being developed, would actually be IP-based. I'm not sure if the mobile phone vendors would like this, but there's no technical reason that the antennas inside of phones couldn't pick up ATSC 3.0 TV.

So the market is still contracting, but there are some interesting opportunities.

In Jonesboro, Arkansas one full power station is ABC and NBC, the other is a PBS affiliate with four total public broadcast channels. Only other licenses are low power and CBS and Fox are on one low power station.

There is a lawsuit going on Little Rock for a station license over the MeTV affiliate regarding whether terms of a sale were met and who owns the station. It is known one potential owner wants to sell the license in the spectrum buyback, the other has stayed silent on plans.

I don't think there's any reason that local station X couldn't purchase rights to channel Z.2 while a different local station Y purchases rights to channel Z.1.


Maybe it just never works out that way, and perhaps that has to do with the broadcasting facilities themselves (antenna towers and the power equipment to pump the physical signals on them) always being owned by the local stations.

Right now the cheapest reasonable sports package one can put together is:

Buy and install a HDTV antenna (probably outside mount if the towers are more than 10-15 miles).

Add on to your internet a streaming service like Sling, ps vue, etc...source it through AppleTV, Roku, Firestick, etc...

This works for the ACC, PAC12, SEC and B12. Can't get FS1 and FS2 through SLing but you can with PS VUE. Sling/PS VUE only works partially for the B1G and the AAC. IIRC no one can buy the B1G Network as an add on to a streaming service, correct?

The CBS Sports Network is trickier...frankly I don't watch it but it appears you can get a subscription. If your game is on a FOX RSN a chance you could be blacked out if offered locally without a cable TV subscription.

I'm saving about $1200 a year but I gave up a DVR and HD at times. I have Internet and a skinny bundle. My Internet, skinny cable TV and Sling Subscription with WATCHESPN is about $90 a month.