Pac-12 Media Deal

This may be more of my interest than the rest of yours but I have enjoyed reading about the new Pac-12 media deal that was completed yesterday. Here are the details as reported by the NYTimes, ESPN, CougCenter:

Under the new deal, the conference’s football games will be shown on ABC and Fox — a combined five will be in prime time each season — and on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and FX.

Basketball will be shown on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and Fox Sports Net. ESPN will also carry a package of Olympic sports.

ESPN and Fox will also rotate the conference’s annual football championship game, and the basketball tournament will alternate among the ESPN networks, and Fox and FX. The Pac-10’s new channel will carry at least 350 sports events. The conference is also creating a digital channel, like ESPN3, to carry at least 500 events annually, and a properties division to handle sponsorships.

As part of an agreement to give up their historically larger share of television revenues, Southern California and UCLA each was to receive a $2 million premium any year that the media rights did not reach $170 million.

Rights to some football and men's basketball games were not sold to Fox and ESPN, preserving some premium property the conference can use for a Pac-10 network to go along with Olympic and other non-revenue sports, a person close to the deal said.

First-tier rights are obviously going to go to ABC, Fox and ESPN, three channels which are virtually indistinguishable in terms of exposure to sports fans. (If you think a game being on ESPN is a step down from being on ABC or Fox, look at Monday Night Football. It's not.) But those second-tier rights that previously went to FSN? I just don't see that being the case anymore.

Fox wasn't going to pony up this kind of money unless it planned on putting a substantial amount of content on FX. That's a great thing for viewers, because FX has roughly the same distribution as ESPN nationally. There might not be as much long-term potential for exposure and growth as being the flagship conference on a new NBC sports network (currently referred to as "rebranded Versus") designed to challenge ESPN would have had, but it's still huge, and I'm betting that the bulk of the second-tier games end up either on FX or on ESPN2. These are channels that are easy for viewers to find that are in virtually every home with a basic digital cable or satellite package across the entire country.

In other words, most of the Pac-12's television broadcasts will be available nationwide -- something that's not currently the case. Huge, huge victory.

The leftover third-tier games then likely fall to ESPNU and FSN. Yes, those channels are harder to find, and no, they're not in as many homes. But they'll be broadcasting games that previously weren't on TV at all, and if I've got the choice between watching a game on FSN with Barry Tompkins and Petros Papadakis and not watching it at all? Well, I'll choose watching the game ... with the volume off. That's OK by me.

I am especially intrigued by the digital channel they are creating, will it be behind a pay wall like the Big Ten network? Will a digital broadcast of football and basketball air simultaneously with the over-the-air broadcast (Big Ten digital network excludes basketball and football)? These are the questions I need answered before I agree to move to the midwest to teach and go outside of the Pac-12 regional sports area.