Big Ten on Cable: When Pigskins Fly

College football is all over TV these days. ABC has a Saturday night game of the week (whenever they're not running NASCAR). CBS covers the best game from the Southeastern Conference. NBC carries Notre Dame home games. And ESPN goes wall to wall with pigskin nearly every night of the week.


Yes, college football is all over TV, unless you happen to live in Big Ten territory and do not have a satellite dish. Folks are missing games involving their favorite teams because of a contract dispute between Comcast, the region's largest cable provider, and the Big Ten conference's new TV network.


In a nutshell, the conference wants its network on a basic level along with ESPN, so everyone with cable can get it. Comcast claims that would cost its customers too much, preferring instead to put the Big Ten Network on a digital sports package. The dispute continues with no end in sight.


It's not like this hasn't happened before. A similar dispute between Comcast and the NFL Network resulted in a temporary legal victory for the cable operator, which put the football channel on digital (the NFL is appealing).


The Big Ten has deals with ABC, CBS and ESPN to show its best matchups in football and men's basketball. The leftovers go to BTN, which usually means showcasing the likes of Minnesota and Northwestern--schools without winning programs or legendary coaches. If the networks ever deign to show games involving the Gophers or the Wildcats, it's usually because they're playing Michigan, Penn State or Ohio State--the ones with winning programs and legendary coaches. And those games are usually over by half time.


As for the rest of the week, BTN plans to show women's sports and other non-revenue producing activities. Not to mention highlight shows and reruns of classic games, just like all the other sports channels. Nothing wrong with any of those, if you have friends or relatives participating. And what happens during the summer? Infomercial City?

What BTN should have done, for public relations purposes if nothing else, is to offer games of local interest to broadcast stations until enough people are able to get the network (Fox affiliates, whose parent company owns half of BTN, would have first dibs).


Comcast is not exactly innocent in all of this. If you are a basic cable subscriber in Minneapolis and suburbs, you might have noticed the gaping holes where channels used to be. That's because Comcast moved the likes of ESPN Classic and Lifetime Movie Network to digital cable, and aren't bothering to replace them. Is it because Comcast is phasing out basic in favor of the more expensive (with more equipment to buy) digital? Not everyone can afford those high-definition TV sets, you know. And that will become more apparent the digital switch of 2009.

At the risk of reducing the whole issue to a sports metaphor, Comcast and the Big Ten Network are locked in a titanic struggle to see who blinks first. And the viewers are the losers no matter what happens.