Big Ten Creates Its Own Network

The Big Ten Conference has taken the next logical step in college athletics by creating its own television network, in partnership with Fox Cable Sports. The twenty year agreement begins in 2007 and calls for a wide variety of Big Ten sports and academic programming to be broadcast on a 24 hour channel dedicated solely to the 11 member schools. At the same time, the Conference renewed its contract with ESPN/ABC for another 10 years, placing its key football and basketball games on those networks while improving the placement of its games and removing its programming from ESPN syndication and taking it to its own network. Basically, the football and basketball games that were previously on ABC/ESPN will still be there and the games that were syndicated will be on the Big Ten Channel. The Big Ten Channel will also provide extensive coverage of the Olympic sports.

This is perhaps the most important set of contracts yet signed by a college conference. Oh, the Mountain West was the first to create its own network. However, it did so with CSTV and nobody watches it anyway. No, these deals are landmark deals in several respects. The ESPN/ABC deal is worth a reported $50 million per year, which is certainly not chump change. More importantly , however, the Big Ten channel is being placed on the basic tier of Direct TV and is being offered to cable systems for the basic tier, which means at no additional charge to the customer. That is highly significant because it greatly enhances the probability of customer demand for the new channel and the likelihood that cable systems will sign up. The Big Ten will own a majority interest in the channel with Fox holding a minority.

The Big Ten has always insisted that it has an academic mission as well as an athletic one and the Big Ten Channel is no exception. The programming will include 60 hours of original programming from each member institution that the conference intends to be used by students and to highlight academic programs by each member institution. It is a unique resource and should provide for some interesting programming.