ESPN - Longhorn Network

[Will94]

Eyes of Texas now upon Longhorn Network - TexasSports.com - Official website of University of Texas Athletics - Texas Longhorns

For any of you who don't know, ESPN's The Longhorn Network launches Friday, August 26. I was curious as to what you non-partisans thought of this. I will freely admit that I despise Texas and realize that might cloud my judgement. That having been said, here are my thoughts.

First, I wish the the Big 12 had created the Big 12 Network when the Big Ten made theirs. We might even have been able to keep Nebraska (I couldn't care less about losing Colorado) if we had done this. The Longhorn Network makes a Big 12 Network impossible now, but I don't think that the conference will be around in five years, so that isn't terribly important at this point.

My other thought is what are they going to show 24/7? They get two football games, a lot of non-conference basketball, and an unknown amount of baseball. The Big 12 has a dismal baseball contract with FSN, so I don't know how much The Longhorn Network would be allowed to show.

The 11 teams of the Big Ten have a hard time filling that channel 24/7. How many times do they think that people are going to watch the same volleyball game or swim meet? In the Spring they have track and field, golf, and tennis. I just don't see where they will be able to get content.

Supposedly they are going to show high school football. High school football is just absurdly popular in this state. That having been said the University Interscholastic League (UIL) doesn't allow friday night games to be televised. Also, wouldn't airing a game that has a kid they are recruiting be an NCAA violation? The only response that I have heard on this subject is that they would have ESPN select the games that they are going to air. If they are going to air games from any of the football factory high schools in Texas, they are going to be loaded with Longhorn recruits, and I don't see how it would be legal.

Then there is the issue of carriage. With them having no professional sports, DirecTV and Dish won't pick them up even with the eternal bully ESPN pushing for carriage. I can't see this station being carried on cable systems outside of this state, and even then, I don't see it as a basic channel outside of a few of the big markets and Austin.

One final thought, this network is a 20 year, $300 million agreement. 20 years?!? What if it goes they way of the KC Royals network or the Trailblazers network? To me, this thing has disaster written all over it.

What do you guys think?

 

[Derwin0]

Texas probably doesn't care if it's carried outside the state or not. And pretty much every cable system in Texas will carry it, so it'll be doing it's job.
Directv & Dish could probably just put it onto Texas spotbeams and that'll make the subscribers there happy.

As for showing high school games, that would be very popular, of course which games do you show? There are hundreds going on every Friday in Texas, if not thousands.

As for being an NCAA violations, the NCAA has no controls over schools TV contracts (per the Supreme Court), so Texas is free to do what it wants with it's Television network. And if ESPN is the one picking the channels, then I don't see any kind of violation. Texas isn't getting any recruiting benefit by showing the kids on TV. If anything it hurts them, as other schools would get a better look at the kid.

For football season, while it would only show 2 Longhorn games, they could easily show other non conference games from within the State, all it takes is a deal with that school. After all, why wouldn't A&M (or Houston, or any other school in Texas) not want it's non-conference games shown, even if it's on the Longhorn network, it would still be shown statewide.

 

[Will94]

As for showing high school games, that would be very popular, of course which games do you show? There are hundreds going on every Friday in Texas, if not thousands.

They can't show Friday night football. The UIL won't allow it. Any games they show would have to be at another time. The few games that FSN shows are usually Saturday afternoon. FSN is starting a kind of Red Zone Channel for high school football in Texas this season, and they can't show live coverage either.

TV-Radio notebook: Friday night TV lights warming up | David Barron | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

It won't be entirely analogous to RedZone in that there will be no live action, owing to the University Interscholastic League's rule against live Friday night football broadcasts. But Fox will incorporate camera crews at several dozen sites for highlights that will air throughout the evening, and stringers will use Skype for live updates.
Fans also will be encouraged to send in score updates via social media that will run on a crawl throughout the evening.
Local plans remain up in the air for the 11 p.m. time slot.

As I understand it, the Longhorn Network won't show any road games. The Big 12 just signed a big contract with Fox. As I understand it, ESPN will have to buy rights from Fox to keep airing Big 12 games.


Sources Say Annual Value Of Fox-Big 12 TV Deal To Increase 350% - SportsBusiness Daily | SportsBusiness Journal

The deal would have FSN double the number of football games it is allowed to carry, from 20 to more than 40. Fox also is keeping all digital and mobile rights to those games, and it would retain cable exclusivity for all Big 12 contests. That means that ESPN will be able to show Big 12 games only if it buys them in syndication from Fox. It also gives Fox flexibility to carry games on its other cable channels.

 

[mdonnelly]

It should be handled like the BYU channel that's been on cable for years. Let them show baseball, swimming, volleyball and track, but not football.

 

[SamCdbs]

What do you guys think?

I agree. I do not see this as a successful network. It has every chance at being virtually "stillborn", and gone within a year.

Programming: You covered it. A couple of football games, really its two worst games. Big deal. Non-conference basketball. Big deal. And "olympic sports" and baseball. And what. This is about 40 hours of worthwhile programming crammed into 8736 hours.

Carriage: They want a whopping 40 cents per subscriber in Texas. And, shockingly in Oklahoma, Louisiana, and New Mexico. And an unknown amount elsewhere. Lets think about that. A general rerun based channel like TBS or USA gets maybe 5 cents, and lesser channels are often a part of a package and might get 5 cents for the whole package. 40 cents? And they want to be in either the "basic" package (the standard minimum package everyone gets) or, as a fallback in the "sports tier" (in a mix with the likes of the extra ESPN varriants, NFLN, etc). Believe it or not, there are millions of people in Texas who fall into the following groups: don't follow sports; don't follow college sports; don't follow UT; and lastly and most importantly, might loosly follow UT but are not willing (or able) to pay that much for this little content and are content to listen to a football game or two on the radio, or to head to BW3.

They have to convince an entire state's set of cable operators. And DISH and DirecTV. At 40 cents!!

Then comes the other three states. Yes, like any broad-based school, there are Texas alumni around its region, indeed around the country. But as a part of a basic package. In OKLAHOMA!!! No system with any on-the-ground knowledge of its customers in the surrounding states is going to tell them their bills just went up so they can watch Texas girl's volleyball.

Then the nation. This is a huge problem. Texas is a nice program. But no better nor more passionatly followed than 30 or 40 other programs we all could name. If this deal actually worked, then what? You can forget cable out of state. No cable system has the capacity to carry 30 or 40 such channels, and it would be a burden to DirecTV to do so.

The only way I see this working is as an internet based deal, and I think we are still a decade away from enough people having enough bandwidth and savy to do that.

And then you have A&M. IMHO, while it still would have been a bad idea, it would have been a less bad idea to have doubled the amount of available material, and maybe added, some substantial %age more fans, by making this a joint venture with A&M. Or even with several other Texas colleges.

I say this goes the way the Royals network, etc. Its just not viable.