Market Research: It’s Big Tentastic
Thank you, BTN!I am one of the “lucky” few to have received the Big Ten Network since its inception, allowing me to become closer to wrestling, field hockey and gymnastics than ever before. The network itself is quite simply Big Ten overload and has some problems to fix in production, but when every event is in HD, it’s hard to stay away.
If you have had the chance to watch Ohio State on the BTN, you know two things: the picture is going to be outstanding and the network would very much like you to call your local cable provider. After seeing Thad’s plea to call or switch providers fifty times this season, I had to make my own plea to the Network.
While it is brief, a Zach Williams highlight appears in the OSU promos. For those of you who lack short term memory, Zach was last seen getting kicked out of a game his junior year by Jim O’B-Cheatin and transfered to Wright State to finish off his career.
I sat down and wrote a nice email to the network letting them know that trying to sell the network to a fanbase by showing a promo of player that was kicked off of the team was not, you know, the smartest thing in the world to do. To their credit they responded and said they’d look into it — but I’m not holding out any hope.
So if you’re one of the lucky dozen or so in the Columbus area to get the network, you’ve been warned: Ohio State’s career leader in pump fakes and non-dunks that should have been would like you to call Time Warner so you can watch the team that he was dismissed from.
One of their other main Buckeye Basketball highlights features Emonte Jernigans laying the ball up.. another head scratcher.
heh, really? (I don’t get the BTN down here, sadly). Now if they add the image of Charles Bass’ bank shot in the Big Ten tourney, they’d have the mixtape of the O’Brien days from my time at OSU.
Yeah, like so MANY other things shown on this “breakthrough network”, I found our buckeye basketball highlights to be at best comical. Zach undoubtedly just made another wide open lay-up to beat his chest over. I had never seen a 6-7 or 6-8 guy unable to dunk before in my life. Still trying to figure that one out. I think I with my keg belly and 3″ vertical could out jump that clown.
Classic O’B-Cheating recruiting. By the way so much for the character over ability he professed all throughout his tenure by the end of that marriage.
As for the network, the base idea was good. The network has a lot of possibilities for great positives and things they could do with it to be what they are professing to try to be. However, choices in programming and the people to do both studio and game analysis is rediculous and pathetic to put it mildly!
This doesn’t even bring in their part in greed negotiations keeping this off 50-60% of TV’s around here and in the midwest. I have DirecTV and are by NO means a Time Warner fan. So I am not flying their banner. However, if you don’t have the exposure in the households you need to reach with quality programming and people that don’t put insomniacs to sleep, I fail to see where you can even begin to think you are successful.
Here’s hoping someone pulls their head out of their rear before another conference starts one of these channels and gets it right to make our conference look weak in yet another area.
Jim Delany are you listening?
I applaud Time Warner for their stand. I don’t particularly care for that company, either, but I admire them for not budging on the issue.
Is Zach Williams the one in the promo who is back-pedaling and shouting something incomprehensible? I scarcely remember him, and can’t remember Jernigans at all.
“Bass-Off-the-Glass” was the moment when I realized that Ohio State was about to come into the full grace of the basketball gods. The look on Izzo’s face when Bass made that shot was priceless. I’d love to frame it.
I had enough of Time Warner. I had been a customer ever since I moved out of OSU dorms in ‘91 or ‘92. But their stance against the NFL Network & BTN drove me away. Yeah, their stance might be in the customer’s interest, but as a customer…I still was not getting these channels & I need my Buckeye fix! Also, my bill jumped by $10 one month. My wife called to ask why & they had no answers for us. It just so happened that it was right about the time their new building off SR-315 was completed…I wonder if that had anything to do with it? So, I tried out WOW for a week. During that week, I realized WOW (at the time) did not have BTN or ESPN2 in HD…so I dumped them as well. I finally made the jump to DirecTV that I wanted to all along (mostly because of the NFL package). I can’t tell you how much happier I am. Not only did I enjoy watching every Steelers game this year on the NFL package, but my HD DVR is much better than both TW & WOW’s. It has much more memory available. Also, the box has a cool function for fantasy football where you can enter your starting roster (along with your opponent’s) & a ticker would go across the bottom of your screen every time one of those players did something. Oh yeah, there are much more HD channel options on DirecTV for the HD snobs (like me).
Although I have the BTN, I really think this could be hazardous to the Big 10. Will there be a backlash on ranking teams because of it? Will it hurt recruiting because a lot of people can’t watch the games? I’m not so sure yet…
Why are fans (unless they work for Time Warner) in any way supporting Time Warner in this? One of the main issues as to why the Big Ten Network would not sign with Time Warner wanted it to be on a bigger, more expensive tier…..therefore costing the fans more money……Jim Delany and the Big 10 were clearly against this!!! You can talk about the programming being bad all you want…..but that doesn’t change the fact that The BTN is NOT trying to overcharge their fans while Time Warner IS!
The backlash against the Big 10 has already begun. The WWL barely mentions them during the Sat. morning Gameday shows. I realize the conference may not be that strong this year, but neither is the SEC and they are the focus of many of the lead stories on the WWL.
I have WOW, and they do have the BTN in HD….along with 2 extra digital channels which are supposed to be alternatives. If the hometown team is playing and there is another game at the same time (don’t know why there would be), you can find that game on one of those channels.
Wil, the BTN wanted to charge $1 per subscriber if my memory serves correct, which is much more than other comparable networks.
FWIW, ESPN was the first network to ever charge cable companies a subscriber fee ($0.10) and people thought they were nuts when they started doing that in the early 80s.
I live in Florida and have Comcast service. I also commend Comcast for taking a stand against being blackmailed into paying a premium price for a channel that has 2 sports (football and basketball) that people want to see and multiple sports people could care less about (sorry women’s field hockey). Why Big Ten Network won’t accept being added in a sports package is beyond me. Even during football season, ABC/ESPN takes the best games and leaves the least desirable games for Big Ten Network. The announce crews are horrible and the sports round-up cut in’s are an embarrassment. Big Ten network is nothing more than a pay-per-view channel and many of us would pay for it as such. Great Job again Jim Delaney!!!!
Mitch G.
Boynton Beach, FL
Boeckman Fett, They wanted to charge around .70 cents per subscriber…..less than what espn and some others charge now, however, still a higher price than most new channels requested. This price is charged to Time Warner though, not the customer. Time Warner refused this price but STILL wanted to put the channel on a higher tier which would cost customers between $2 and $3. The Big Ten Network said they would be willing to negotiate their price but the channel would have to be removed from the higher tier that would cost customers more money. What that is basically stating is that the BTN was willing to negotiate the price it was charging Time Warner if Time Warner would negotiate the price they were charging customers. Time Warner said “no.” Direct TV, Wow, and Insight all agreed to this and now have the BTN. You sure you’re supporting the right side?
p.s. You may not like the BTN but I still think it is better than the ONN.
This just in: Channel 10 (or 4, can’t remember) reported last night that Sarniak is NOT a booster for tOSU. so, to those scUM fans who have been trying to imply something nefarious is afoot, suck it!
Wil, I have to disagree with you, but your grammar is excellent today. The BTN was actually trying to charge $1.10 per customer, which was (is) the 3rd highest subscription rate, behind ESPN and I believe NFL Network (don’t quote me on the second one). This rate was only for the eight states that are considered Big Ten country, the rest of the nation would receive it for .10 cents per subscriber.
The Wikipedia page actually is pretty informative, assuming everything is true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Ten_Network
I am not up to speed on the cable negotiations and I agree it is better than ONN, but there is major work to do and if you sit and watch the channel for more than three hours, you are going to go crazy. I just have a hard time believing that their marketing approach was the best way to go about this. Why wouldn’t you put your network out there for people to see and then revisit the situation contractually within the next year. I believe this would have given them more advertisers beyond their own conference and Fox sports (who ironically own 49% of the BTN). Right now they have maybe 5 different companies buying air time from them.
Please be kind to me in your rebuttle, it is Friday afternoon.
corey, that info about the $1.10 was what was put out by time warner. everything i’ve read from a non-biased source (the disgrace, err, dispatch) quoted Delany as saying they were asking around $.70 PER subscriber from the cable companies, but not to be charge TO the customer. It was time warner that put out the info that they would “have to raise basic cable rates by $1.10 per customer” in order to put BTN on the basic tier.
Personally, i think it’s stupid for this stand off, but everything i’ve read always states that BTN is willing to negotiate it’s per customer price in exchange for being on the basic tier, but comcast & time warner refuse to even CONSIDER putting it on basic, they ONLY want it on the premium tier.
Neither side is right in this situation, but to me it’s the cable companies that are being the obstructionists, if you will, by refusing to even negotiate with BTN.
in an effort at full disclosure, i too have WOW & therefore i have suffered through the on air commentary. horrible.
Corey, I think Zach covered most of it for me…..however I have heard from many sources that Fox also owns the majority of Direct TV. This being said it makes you wonder if, in the financial sense, fox isn’t using this to bolster the spread of Direct TV. If this is true they would have a huge edge on the negotiations since they stand to benefit even if Time Warner doesn’t come to an agreement with them. If you were in their shoes wouldn’t you be tempted to milk this through the Big 10 tournament. Therefore you can steal as many customers as you can and show Time Warner that you can legitimately hurt their business and benefit twofold by gaining in the now and possibly forcing Time Warner to lower their requirements.
On a side note, the HD on Direct TV is light years beyond Time Warner.
You are correct Wil, Fox is a majority owner in DirectTV, so they have a vested interest in both. I agree on milking it through the BT tourney, but what happens between March 16 — August 1st? I think this is where Time Warner and the likes will prove their point. What is the content going to be? Are you going to rewatch the Ohio State/Coppin St. hoops game? Perhaps take in a Northwestern/Purdue softball game? I’m a huge fan of the Big Ten Women’s show. I think this is where they fall short and may realize their errors when no one is screaming for the Network come next football season.
I am waiting to hear how Mark and Travis enjoy their DirectTV, before I invest in it. Have you had problems during bad weather?
I have yet to have any issues with my DirecTV due to weather. I have rebooted my box twice, but I’ve had to do that with any cable box I’ve ever had.
My investment in DirecTV was well worth it.
A little known secret is to spray “pam†or any other type of spray oil that you would spray onto a skillet onto your dish. This will stop ice from freezing to your dish. I can tell you first hand that this works and does not negatively affect the dish.
I too have DirecTV and the weather interruptions happen most in the spring and summer months with heavy rains. Even with that they are few and far between. Overall DirecTV is a far better product than cable. The HD is better by all counts. Customer service, well that sucks on both ends. Price for what you get, no contest DirecTV. Rest easy. Smart investment and it will continue to boom.
I personally hate it, but I can see why people like it. When operational the qualtity is much better than cable, but I’ve had 2 disruptions since October. I’ve never heard of that “pam” fix but I’ll keep that in mind, Wil. Once it went out due to high wind and another time it was out all night due to ice. Besides the disruptions these a-holes put a 1:1 scaled replica of the hubble telescope on the side of my condo. Keep in mind I left my girlfriend in charge because I was working and installation is an all day event, but I left her a copy of my community guidelines to show them (on the garage or back of the house). Dude says “oh it’s fine” which I wouldn’t have accepted. I came home and had a friggin’ heart attack. I would also assume DTV was letting bums off the street become installers due to the high volume of request around the time. I wasn’t concerned about football, but all those b-ball games didn’t leave me with many options. WOW/Insight are not available in my area. Well that’s my 2 cents for what it’s worth.
Am I the only one looking forward to some college baseball on the BTN? Usually you only get a few regional championship games and the college world series.