Between this and the bowl in Montgomery, this month has just been full of bad decisions for the MAC.

(08-23-2013 01:58 PM)MileHighBronco Wrote:  M(O)Y - Well, I got pissed last year when I bought the Dish multisport pack so I could see more MAC fb and bb games, only to find out that STO blacked out many/most of the games.

That was ESPN that blacked it out, not STO. ESPN is the exclusive national provider and showing STO nationally on Dish can't happen without ESPN's permission. Thats why if you did buy the ESPN Gameplan or ESPN Full-Court package then those STO blackouts disappeared. ESPN needed their cut.

This set-up seems nearly identical to the Sun-Belt Network:

"Cox Sports Television (CST) and Comcast Sports Southeast (CSS) announced a one year extension of the Sun Belt Network – a partnership of the league and the two regional sports networks that has been in place since 2008.

The agreement between the three parties will result in the continuation of broadcasts for football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, baseball, volleyball and softball contests for the 2013-14 sports season.

For the upcoming season the Sun Belt Network will air seven high-definition football broadcasts as part of a minimum of 39 broadcasts that the network will air. The Sun Belt Conference may seek distribution with providers outside of the footprint those two networks reach. Contests are often available on ESPN3.com and ESPN GamePlan outside of the CSS and CST markets."
- See more at: http://www.sunbeltsports.org/Article/tab...JMdY2.dpuf


Cable Provider - check
Available to other cable providers outside of TWC's footprint but inside MAC footprint - check
ESPN3 can carry them all outside of MAC footprint - check
ESPN GamePlan can carry them on TV outside of MAC footprint - check
Olympic sports included - check

This has ESPN written all over it.

Totally agree on Uakronkid's post...everything had been going well for the MAC until the last couple months

(08-23-2013 02:09 PM)uakronkid Wrote:  Between this and the bowl in Montgomery, this month has just been full of bad decisions for the MAC.

FIRE STEINBRECHER!

Here is a map of all the cable providers and where they are. If we could add Comcast to this agreement (allowed as they are outside of Ohio and NY) similar to how the Sun Belt has two cable providers, then the entire MAC would be covered. The DirectTV and Dish subscribers would have to watch on ESPN3 or buy the ESPN GamePlan package.



You can zoom in on this one:

http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/fcc.connect...05/-81.650



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(08-23-2013 02:11 PM)Miami (Oh) Yeah ! Wrote:  

(08-23-2013 01:58 PM)MileHighBronco Wrote:  M(O)Y - Well, I got pissed last year when I bought the Dish multisport pack so I could see more MAC fb and bb games, only to find out that STO blacked out many/most of the games.

That was ESPN that blacked it out, not STO. ESPN is the exclusive national provider and showing STO nationally on Dish can't happen without ESPN's permission. Thats why if you did buy the ESPN Gameplan or ESPN Full-Court package then those STO blackouts disappeared. ESPN needed their cut.

I DID have ESPN Gameplan and those games I wanted to watch on STO were indeed blacked out and usually were not carried on Gameplan. I did not buy the FullCourt pkg. and had a number of STO games blacked out.

My ISP does not carry ESPN3. It is one of the former baby bells (many times renamed) and is the 800 lb. gorilla in the room. I may have to check with Dish to see if their internet plan will carry ESPN3. If so, maybe I will switch.

Being a MAC fan way outside of the footprint is difficult. I thought things were getting better the past few years with expanded coverage. But now it seems to be getting tougher again.

My only hope is Gameplan this season.

So TWC Sports in Ohio and New York will cover the MAC.

I had no idea how much they completely dominated these markets.

There are 4.5 million households in Ohio and 7.5 million in New York. Assuming that TWCS reaches 50% of these households (if you have cable, you have TWC in these states except for those with Dish or no cable at all), then TWCS will reach an audience of roughly 6 million households.

TWCS - 6 million households
Fox Sports Ohio - 5 million
STO - 2.8 million.

The agreement mentioned any other cable provider outside of Ohio and New York (but within the MAC footprint) can pick these games up. If we can make a similar agreement with Comcast, it will cover the rest of the MAC in Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Massachusetts and double the 6 million household number.

"Time Warner Cable SportsChannel is also affiliated with ESPNEWS, which is usually carried during the midday period. Paid programming airs on the channel in the overnight hours.

Most first-choice Big East basketball and football games produced by ESPN Plus air exclusively on Time Warner Cable SportsChannel in its broadcast territory, including any that involve Syracuse University. Additionally, Time Warner Cable SportsChannel rebroadcasts Syracuse University games televised by other ESPN networks"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner_Cable_Sports

Sounds like there is a relationship between TWCS and that the MAC games will be taking the place of the Big East games that they are losing.

This may actually be better than first thought if we can just get the other parts of the MAC territory blanketed by Comcast. TWCS is launching a new website and perhaps we will be their marquee programming and will market it as such both on the website and on TV. The cozy relationship already in place with ESPN makes me think their is more to this. This will indeed cover more households than STO or FSO and expand coverage.

Buffalo actually should be thrilled with this deal, they will now be shown all over New York State.
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(08-23-2013 02:49 PM)MileHighBronco Wrote:  

(08-23-2013 02:11 PM)Miami (Oh) Yeah ! Wrote:  

(08-23-2013 01:58 PM)MileHighBronco Wrote:  M(O)Y - Well, I got pissed last year when I bought the Dish multisport pack so I could see more MAC fb and bb games, only to find out that STO blacked out many/most of the games.

That was ESPN that blacked it out, not STO. ESPN is the exclusive national provider and showing STO nationally on Dish can't happen without ESPN's permission. Thats why if you did buy the ESPN Gameplan or ESPN Full-Court package then those STO blackouts disappeared. ESPN needed their cut.

I DID have ESPN Gameplan and those games I wanted to watch on STO were indeed blacked out and usually were not carried on Gameplan. I did not buy the FullCourt pkg. and had a number of STO games blacked out.

My ISP does not carry ESPN3. It is one of the former baby bells (many times renamed) and is the 800 lb. gorilla in the room. I may have to check with Dish to see if their internet plan will carry ESPN3. If so, maybe I will switch.

Being a MAC fan way outside of the footprint is difficult. I thought things were getting better the past few years with expanded coverage. But now it seems to be getting tougher again.

My only hope is Gameplan this season.

Here is what I can remember:

I have DirecTV with the sports package + ESPN GamePlan and ESPN FullCourt. I live in the Washington, D.C. area.

Indeed I believe all (?) of the STO hoops game were blacked out but available on ESPN's FullCourt.

My only problem with that is that STO had HD whereas FullCourt was SD only.

And yes, if you bought the sports pack (a bunch of sports channels) you still need to buy the ESPN packages such as MLB ExtraInnings, FullCourt and GamePlan to get games which are OUTSIDE your viewing area.

Why are people upset with the Commish???????

STO is now owned by Fox Sports and presumably not available to do MAC sports.

I asusme they lost one provider, STO, but picked up another, TWC.

Normally that would be considered good news that an alternative provider was found.

The problem is that there is less availability for MAC games for people who want to see MAC games. It is hard to be happy just because we didn't lose all the coverage. STO was not a provider. They were a channel available to any system that wante dto carry them. TWC is a closed shop provider. All those people on all those other cable systems, plus the satellite providers like DISH who used to carry STO now are shut out. People are not going to switch to a crappy cable company (easily the worst choice in the area I live in--overpriced, terrible service, erratic signal, arrogant and spotty tech help, plus their own productions have '90's quality production values) just to watch MAC games. The number of people able to see MAC games has been seriously slashed. This is very bad. If it's the best the MAC could do, it's a bad sign for the conference.

With the new Fox Sports 1 channel trying to compete with ESPN I was hoping we'd find a way to get out there more on a national level. This "deal" hampers us even in a local to bordering states basis yet alone nationally.

(08-23-2013 05:38 PM)Polish Hammer Wrote:  With the new Fox Sports 1 channel trying to compete with ESPN I was hoping we'd find a way to get out there more on a national level. This "deal" hampers us even in a local to bordering states basis yet alone nationally.

Both Fox Sports 1 and NBCSN are dying for college football inventory.

I bet the TWC thing has to do with ESPN mandating it so we don't give a secondary contract to a competitor.

The TWC deal ends in 3 years same time as ESPN contract up. So MAC isnt really out anything if they still want to negotiate with NBC

I wish that we could've broadcasted early season weekend games on regional Fox networks (or FS1 online at the minimum) and let ESPN do our national stuff, but it's obviously not in our future plans. It hasn't exactly been a banner week for the MAC, but until I know what is going on behind closed doors with ESPN, I don't think I can make much of a judgement.

That being said, I'm none too thrilled with Montgomery and this Time Warner thing going down. However, I don't think we can ignore the fact that Steinbrecher has been so silent and meticulous with his decision making until it's all wrapped up, yet there's been so much significant MAC news lately between the bowl pool rumors, the Montgomery Bowl, potential bowls in the Bahamas and Boca, now this TWC stuff. Things would have stayed quiet if the status quo were in our immediate future, and that's whats keeping me from pulling out my pitchfork and torch and heading to Cleveland. Why would all of these decisions start to build up without any payoff? We obviously had to weigh our options between ESPN and NBC and/or Fox, competition in this situation creates better options for us for the future.

Ideally, we're in for a big payday with ESPN, we wrap up the Bahamas Bowl, another one against the P5, and then we can let our football teams do the talking. Realistically, we still have to remember we're the MAC. We don't get many butts in the seats, our ratings on TV are far from great, our basketball as a whole isn't as good as many other mid-major conferences, and our national perception, right or wrong, is that we're a bunch of directional schools that get killed by Big Ten teams the first few weeks of the season (though that's turning around due to recent events). Our biggest asset is our undervalued football, which has fortunately began to kick a$$ at the right time. We're in for a better future, there's no doubt to that; we will have more bowls and TV money that'll start up in a year or so. The question is what the degree of dividends we'll begin to recieve will be, and when considering that we have to remember that we have little leverage in the grand scheme of things.

hmmm TWC is the sole cable company for Athol-Orange, the economic heart of the North Quabbin Region.

(08-23-2013 07:47 PM)Steve1981 Wrote:  hmmm TWC is the sole cable company for Athol-Orange, the economic heart of the North Quabbin Region.

Hmmm, indeed.

UMass is ALL in! 'Bout time.

(08-23-2013 01:47 PM)Miami (Oh) Yeah ! Wrote:  Temple fans are thrilled at how much better their coverage is from their A-10 deal.

Does anyone have the specifics of the A-10 deal? UMass fans?

I posted jokingly that this means UMass is all in, but maybe it does mean that.

If the A-10 deal is worse than all of this added MAC coverage, perhaps we've reached the tipping point.

Welcome UMass, all-sports!

Quote:As part of the three-year partnership, Time Warner Cable SportsChannel will televise an expanded number of live conference football games, men’s and women’s basketball games, including both conference basketball tournaments, ancillary programming opportunities and additional neutral site conference championship programming in the sports of volleyball, baseball, softball and men’s and women’s soccer.

“The Mid-American Conference is pleased to partner with Time Warner Cable to provide expanded coverage of Mid-American Conference teams and student-athletes,” said MAC Commissioner, Dr. Jon A. Steinbrecher. “This new relationship will provide us with the opportunity to televise more events in more sports than ever before. This season alone we will televise 55 basketball games, which is the most in Conference history. Overall we will expand our televised events in football, basketball, volleyball, softball, baseball and soccer.”

MAC programming on Time Warner Cable SportsChannel this academic year will include live regular season football and men’s and women’s basketball games, live men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, baseball and softball tournament and championship games, preview shows, a signing day special, coaches shows, and other special event programming. Starting next season, Time Warner Cable SportsChannel will produce weekly magazine, studio and long-form shows around MAC athletics.

This helps out NEW YORK tremendously as well. They are now set up to battle Syracuse directly.

I could be wrong but I didnt think we had olympic sport programming with STO so from that standpoint it could be a step up.

It sounds like more games are going to be produced than before and more will be getting ESPN3 carriage. Lets say TWC produces 10 Saturday MAC football games upn from the 4-5 that STO would give us....that could mean more ESPN3 games.

Dont forget Comcast is tied to NBC. Its very possible the MAC doesn't show there either for competitive reasons. If ESPN does ultimately reopen the deal before its up it llooks like they will maintain exclusive control of 1st tier rights, IMO

A10 has 15 games on ESPN, 25 on CBSSN and 25 on NBCSN.

AAC has like 120 games on either ESPN/2/U/News or CBSSN

MAC has 15 games on ESPN and now 55 games on this TWCS arrangement. However (pure speculation) the MAC adding 25-30 more games (40-45 total) on ESPN wouldn't be out of the question (the same amount that ESPN just sold of the AAC to CBSSN.

If not, like others have said, NBCSN bid on a HUGE AAC TV package before losing it to ESPN so I think they are interested. The new TWCS regional deal and ESPN deal both end in 3 years so negotiations with NBC can go forward. All the other conferences are already locked up until like 2021 so the MAC wont have too much competition during that negotiation window. Big Ten also is up in 2016, but if anything they would move games away from ESPN (BTN and Fox) and wont be interested in NBCSN. PAC/ACC/SEC also adding content to their own networks so the MAC will be competing against who? Sun Belt, A10, AAC locked up until 2021, CUSA is strictly Fox and CBSSN and MWC is also locked up. NBC and ESPN could want MAC games.