Cable TV battle leaves U football mostly in dark

The Gophers will open the college football season Saturday night — but don't count on being able to watch the game from the comfort of your couch. For some Gophers fans, the wait might last all season.

The Big Ten Network (BTN), which makes its debut tonight and will air the Gophers' opener against Bowling Green, has yet to reach agreements with the three biggest cable operators in Minnesota: Comcast (550,000 subscribers), Charter Communications (200,000) and Mediacom (110,000). The network does have an agreement in place with DirecTV.

BTN will televise a variety of events, including football, basketball, hockey and Olympic sports, as well as other programming generated by the conference's member schools.

But the football season apparently will begin with a substantial number of fans being blacked out in the eight states with Big Ten institutions. Charter, for instance, serves Madison, home of the Wisconsin Badgers. Comcast, meanwhile, has 5.7 million customers in those states and, in addition to Minnesota, serves large portions of Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania.

Mark Silverman, president of BTN, said talks are continuing with several cable companies, including Charter and Mediacom, and satellite provider Dish Network. An agreement was reached Wednesday with Insight Communications, the ninth-largest cable operator in the United States.

But the situation with Comcast has turned into a headache for everyone involved. "That [agreement] may not happen this year, maybe next year," said Marc Ganis, who runs SportsCorp., a Chicago sports consulting firm.

Comcast is the dominant cable operator in the Twin Cities and serves the University of Minnesota campus. It appears to be a long shot that the three Gophers football games scheduled to be carried by BTN or the approximately 20 men's basketball games will be seen by Comcast subscribers.

Last season, an average of more than 80,000 households in the Twin Cities tuned into five of the Gophers football games carried on cable, according to Nielsen Media Research. (The Vikings, by comparison, average 506,877 viewers on over-the-air TV.) The Gophers' appearances on BTN are scheduled for this week, Sept. 8 against Miami (Ohio) and Nov. 3 against Illinois.

Negotiations between Comcast and BTN that could best be described as acrimonious from the get-go broke off last week. Officials at Fox Cable Networks, which owns 49 percent of BTN and is serving as the distribution arm for the upstart, issued a statement saying Comcast is "unwilling to negotiate with us," and "it is now clear that it's highly unlikely any agreement will be achieved prior to launch."

The primary issue is on which tier of service the network would be placed by Comcast. Executives at BTN have said everything is negotiable with distributors except for one matter: In the eight states with Big Ten schools, their channel must be carried on the expanded basic service.

Comcast says it wants to carry BTN on its digital sports tier. That would mean subscribers would pay an additional fee to get it along with a variety of other channels.

"We have never had a programmer ever come out with a new product and dictate that they will only discuss one level of service," said Bill Connors, the Midwest division president of Comcast. The conference, though, has a very good financial reason for wanting to be on expanded basic. It means that not only will it get the maximum amount of money because there will be more per-subscriber fees, but also that advertising rates would be worth more money.

Silverman has confirmed that the Big Ten's per-subscriber asking price from some operators is $1.10 -- a figure Comcast said is too high -- but he makes it clear the figure isn't set in stone. It's also commonly known that the bigger the cable company, the lower the fee per subscriber. Outside of the Big Ten territory, BTN is asking for about 10 cents per subscriber and is willing to go on a digital tier.

The rhetoric between the sides has been building, and advertising campaigns have been run by both.

"Our largest expense is programming costs," Connors said. "That is why we have been very judicious in the last four or five years in getting sanity around what we are committing [to carry] and what our economics are."

BTN isn't going to have many marquee football games. Under the new agreement that also includes ABC and ESPN — and will net each school about $7.5 million per year — the selection process gives ABC the top choice each week. BTN will have second choice in three of the 12 weeks, the third choice after ESPN during three weeks and the fourth choice after ESPN2 in the other six weeks.

Charter and Mediacom have some of the same issues with BTN as Comcast, but those situations haven't turned nearly as contentious. Ganis said this doesn't surprise him. "Comcast has developed a reputation nationally for being one of the most difficult negotiators for carriage in the country," he said. "When they have leverage they use it and they're not shy about it."

In Minnesota, BTN has deals in place with three smaller cable companies: Hiawatha Broadband, Ace Communications and Consolidated Telephone Company.

BTN officials have worked deals to at least make their channels available on several Big Ten campuses but have been unable to do so for Minnesota and Illinois.

Connors said he believes that eventually Big Ten schools are going to apply pressure to the network to work out a deal. But Tom Wistrcill, the Gophers' senior associate athletics director, said the school's support of the venture is not wavering.

"We're 100 percent behind this," he said. "This is a 20-year agreement [with Fox Cable Networks] and we're in this together. It will give such great exposure to so many student athletes and programs that haven't had that. That is why we don't look at this as just one day or one game that is missed."

Silverman, a veteran of the cable business, said he's not sure what will happen.

"There are examples of where a deal gets done shortly after the launch or done before and examples of networks that went away," he said. "Which one this is going to be is a hard question. I can tell you we're not going to go away because we have a 20-year agreement and distribution with DirecTV. The question is just, are we going to be able to come to an agreement with Comcast? Obviously I hope so and I think it's in both of our best interests, but it's a hard time predicting how it will play out."

Judd Zulgad • jzulgad@startribune.c om