CAA Television Package - Largest in FCS

[TexasTerror]

I guess being the premier FCS conference does have some benefits... ;)


BALTIMORE, Md. (July 28, 2010) -- CAA Football, which is the home of the last two NCAA Division I National Champions, will once again feature the nation’s largest Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) television package in the upcoming 2010 season.

CAA Football Commissioner Tom Yeager announced a 29-game television schedule as part of the league’s Media Day Celebration, Wednesday at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, Md. The schedule is highlighted by a conference package of 19 games airing on Comcast Sports Group regional networks.

“We are thrilled to have the largest FCS television package in the country for the fourth-straight year,” Yeager said. “Thanks to our partnerships with Comcast Sports Group, ESPN and a number of other carriers we are able to create a television package which showcases the best FCS conference in the country.”


http://www.caasports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=48484&SPID=4660&DB_OEM_ID=8500&ATCLID=204971471

[NuJerzBullDog]

I guess being the premier FCS conference does have some benefits... ;)



http://www.caasports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=48484&SPID=4660&DB_OEM_ID=8500&ATCLID=204971471

i wish our conference could do something like that..i know the socon has a media deal with sports south...

[jmufan999]

nice to see that the CAA has a huge package...

i mean...

[jmufan999]

and cue the countdown to the inevitable "who's the best conference" debate.

[BearsCountry]

Basically CAA is lucky they are in Comcast's region which has a lack of FBS teams for Saturday games. Valley Football is always up against the Big 12 on Fox Sports Midwest, and it seems Fox keeps adding more Big 12 games each year, which hurts our exposure.

[NHwildEcat]

Basically CAA is lucky they are in Comcast's region which has a lack of FBS teams for Saturday games. Valley Football is always up against the Big 12 on Fox Sports Midwest, and it seems Fox keeps adding more Big 12 games each year, which hurts our exposure.

Certainly you are correct with that statement. The best part is that Comcast wants to show these games to their marketbase...without their willingness to do regional broadcasts there would be no package at all!

I know the YES network carries some games...but is it just Yale games? I know NESN almost never covers football, they tend to have a full schedule between the Red Sox and Bruins but I wish they would committ to one game every Saturday. It would be a step in the right direction.

[Jackman]

The ACC is really our only overlap, and they have nothing between Boston and Maryland. The Big "East" has nothing between New York and Tampa. It's a fortunate situation, particularly on the crowded east coast.

[CrazyCat]

I don't want to start a conference holy war xsmiley_wix but this quote



“We are thrilled to have the largest FCS television package in the country for the fourth-straight year,” Yeager said.



seems to contradict this quote from last year



OGDEN, UTAH (August 10, 2009) – The Big Sky Conference announced the largest television package for a Football Championship Subdivision conference on Monday, a lineup that includes 22 conference games and a total of 35 contests featuring league teams.

[CollegeSportsInfo]

Love the non-mention of the financials in the article.

[GannonFan]

Basically CAA is lucky they are in Comcast's region which has a lack of FBS teams for Saturday games. Valley Football is always up against the Big 12 on Fox Sports Midwest, and it seems Fox keeps adding more Big 12 games each year, which hurts our exposure.

It's not a lack of FBS teams, it's just that Comcast doesn't have a deal with any of them. The CAA has the Big Ten (Penn St), the Big East, and the ACC in their footprint. That's plenty of competition. The thing is, they all have deals with groups other than Comcast.

[Lehigh Football Nation]

Certainly you are correct with that statement. The best part is that Comcast wants to show these games to their marketbase...without their willingness to do regional broadcasts there would be no package at all!

I know the YES network carries some games...but is it just Yale games? I know NESN almost never covers football, they tend to have a full schedule between the Red Sox and Bruins but I wish they would committ to one game every Saturday. It would be a step in the right direction.

Comcast has been trying to grow their national college football coverage via a lot of "small" deals - one of which is involves CAA teams and a cross-section of different FCS schools (Cal Poly, UC Davis) - and some big deals with the Pac 10, Big XII and others. The Comcast Network (formerly CN-8), an essentially local production, has really, really helped get the local teams TV coverage, which then (more often) gets rolled up to the Comcast national broadcasts. Especially in the Northeast, this was worked out extraoridinarily well for both Comcast and the CAA.

YES (Yale) and NESN (Harvard) usually carry some games every year from Ivy schools, but Versus (a Comcast network) now has entered into the ring and televised more of their games as well.

As alluded to, the problem generally is that the sports fan in the Northeast is often bombarded with a surfeit of choice - MLB baseball, NBA games, NHL games, FBS college football - and frequently, those franchises pay Comcast humongous bucks to broadcast their sports first. If you're Comcast, do you pre-empt your coverage of preseason Flyers hockey, backed by mind-boggling financial numbers, with a Richmond/Villanova game that only CAA and FCS football geeks really care about? Flyers games make the executives at Comcast bazillionares; broadcasting FCS football makes them good communty people, but they are broadcasting the games almost as a public service, not to make money.

The same thing goes with the folks at NESN. Are they going to piss off the Bruins, or the few thousand fans who want to see UNH play Towson?

[NHwildEcat]

Comcast has been trying to grow their national college football coverage via a lot of "small" deals - one of which is involves CAA teams and a cross-section of different FCS schools (Cal Poly, UC Davis) - and some big deals with the Pac 10, Big XII and others. The Comcast Network (formerly CN-8), an essentially local production, has really, really helped get the local teams TV coverage, which then (more often) gets rolled up to the Comcast national broadcasts. Especially in the Northeast, this was worked out extraoridinarily well for both Comcast and the CAA.

YES (Yale) and NESN (Harvard) usually carry some games every year from Ivy schools, but Versus (a Comcast network) now has entered into the ring and televised more of their games as well.

As alluded to, the problem generally is that the sports fan in the Northeast is often bombarded with a surfeit of choice - MLB baseball, NBA games, NHL games, FBS college football - and frequently, those franchises pay Comcast humongous bucks to broadcast their sports first. If you're Comcast, do you pre-empt your coverage of preseason Flyers hockey, backed by mind-boggling financial numbers, with a Richmond/Villanova game that only CAA and FCS football geeks really care about? Flyers games make the executives at Comcast bazillionares; broadcasting FCS football makes them good communty people, but they are broadcasting the games almost as a public service, not to make money.

The same thing goes with the folks at NESN. Are they going to piss off the Bruins, or the few thousand fans who want to see UNH play Towson?

Your absolutely right. I wold watxh the Bruins game over a non UNH game. Usually, this is not a problem because most Bruins games are at night. But one thing that NESN does when they have both the Red Sox and Bruins playing at the same time is put up a second channel NESN+ to cover the least important game.

So my thinking is if they had a game a week whether its CAA or IVY or what have you. They could either move the game time (include the potential in their deal) or simply bump it to the secondary channel. Also, while I am thinking of it...CAA finalized their TV schedule today...so NESN would have had ideally up until this past week to determine which game and time to show. They already know the Bruins schedule and they know the remaining Sox schedule. So they could do it if they wanted to.

NESN did pick up two games of the UFL's local Hartford team...so I think the college football plan is a possible thing.

[Field Judge]

and cue the countdown to the inevitable "who's the best conference" debate.

The SoCon did do something right for a change. They added flex scheduling for games at the end of the season. Although there are only 8 games, being able to put games on the TV late in the season that actually matter makes sense.

[Tailbone]

I guess being the premier FCS conference does have some benefits... ;)



http://www.caasports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=48484&SPID=4660&DB_OEM_ID=8500&ATCLID=204971471

BAH!

Between Montana & MSU alone the BSC has 27-28 televised games.
.....more if the kitties can make the playoffs.

BWAHAHAHAAA.

[UNH Fanboi]

BAH!

Between Montana & MSU alone the BSC has 27-28 televised games.
.....more if the kitties can make the playoffs.

BWAHAHAHAAA.

Y'all have 13- and 14-game regular seasons?

[bullseye44]

I'm just hoping that with the trend of FBS conferences signing deals for their own networks (i.e. Big Ten Network and others looking to follow suit), that we'll have a chance to get even more exposure through our deals with Comcast and others for FCS football.

[Lehigh Football Nation]

I'm just hoping that with the trend of FBS conferences signing deals for their own networks (i.e. Big Ten Network and others looking to follow suit), that we'll have a chance to get even more exposure through our deals with Comcast and others for FCS football.

The track record with national TV and FCS-level football has not been good, basically.

In the days of the rabbit ears, ABC had a deal to broadcast (I think) five national games a year, while filling the rest of their football coverage with local (read: cheap) broadcasts. This is how the smaller conferences got airtime. In addition, the I-AA championship game was covered nationally on CBS.

When the NCAA lost control of college football broadcasts and confereces and schools could compete for TV rights with ABC and CBS but also NBC, Turner and ESPN, ABC and CBS kicked "small-time" football to the curb so they could broadcast more games from the Big Ten, SEC and other I-A conferences. ESPN picked up the games ABC and CBS discarded, and broadcast them since they were a young network looking to put basically anything on to fill airtime, and I-AA football was part of that. ESPN ultimately got the I-AA championship rights.

When ESPN really entered the college football market in earnest, they kicked I-AA football to the curb. Two fledgling national sports networks, CSTV and The Football Network, picked up the games ESPN discarded. CSTV even had a I-AA Game of the Week broadcast. However, Comcast and Fox started promoting a "regional network" model, where they buy up the locally-produced games (read: FCS games, and small-time FBS games) that may have more of a regional appeal than national, but would make FCS football geeks and hard-core gamblers happy.

Eventually, The Football Network lost funding and went bankrupt. CBS bought CSTV, which then, in essence, kicked all its FCS football coverage to the curb.

See a trend?

When national media companies start to make bigger plays in the space of "college football", the first thing they tend to do is discard the FCS portfolio. The hope is that regional networks can make enough money to cover the games - and use other methods, such as streaming over the internet, to make the games available to the audience that desires them.

[Lehigh Football Nation]

A funny tidbit I found:

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/boston/access/666587891.html?dids=666587891:666587891&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Oct+06,+1982&author=ERNIE+ROBERTS&pub=Boston+Globe+(pre-1997+Fulltext)&desc=ERNIE+ROBERTS;+HOLY+CROSS+RELISHES+DIV.+1-AA+STATUS&pqatl=google


ABC-TV, which is producing HC-Colgate as a regional telecast, has been Ivy-conscious over the years under Madison Avenue influence and, in fact, grabbed rights to all 1982 and '83 Ivy games in the preseason draft of 1-AA conferences with rival CBS.

Not only has the Ivy League refused to participate in any postseason playoff but it has an embarrassing 3-8 record to date against other 1-AA rivals. And even with the NFL strike in progress, no game between Ivy League foes has drawn more than 13,500. Last Saturday, Palmer Stadium accomodated just 10,743 for the showdown between league leaders Brown and Princeton.

"Colgate is as fine a 1-AA team as there is with exceptional potential in its passing game. Holy Cross has an excellent offense with good receivers and a fine tailback. But from what Colgate showed us last week - they ran 30 offensive plays in the first quarter alone - Holy Cross must play absolutely outstanding defense to win up there."

Funny to see two things: 1) that once the rights of TV broadcasts devolved from the NCAA to individual conferences, the Ivy League broadcasts were snapped up because they seemed lucrative, and 2) 13,500 was seen as poor attendance for an Ivy League game. Nowadays, 13,500 would be a roaring success.

[Tailbone]

Y'all have 13- and 14-game regular seasons?

Sometimes more.

Last year the Griz season lasted 16 games.

[TexasTerror]

Guess the CAA is not the "largest"...


OGDEN, UTAH (August 13, 2010) - The Big Sky Conference once again announced the largest television package of a Football Championship Subdivision Conference on Friday, a lineup that includes 24 of the 36 conference games.

In all, almost 40 regular-season games featuring Big Sky Conference teams will be televised in 2010.

“We’re thrilled once again to offer our fans the opportunity to view so many of our games on television,’’ said Big Sky Conference Commissioner Doug Fullerton. “Our television package is unmatched at the Football Championship Subdivision level.’’

http://www.bigskyconf.com/news/2010/8/13/FB_0813105912.aspx

[WMTribe90]

Just had DirectTV installed at my house. I'll be able to catch five WM games (in HD) this season (UMass, ODU, UD, JMU and UR). Pretty amazing considering that I live in Colorado. The Direct TV sports pack that includes The Comcast Network (TCN) and the regional Comcast channels is only an additional $10/month.

[UNHFootballAlum]

Just had DirectTV installed at my house. I'll be able to catch five WM games (in HD) this season (UMass, ODU, UD, JMU and UR). Pretty amazing considering that I live in Colorado. The Direct TV sports pack that includes The Comcast Network (TCN) and the regional Comcast channels is only an additional $10/month.

Dish Network has the same package for $5/month

[CrazyCat]

“We are thrilled to have the largest FCS television package in the country for the fourth-straight year,” Yeager said.




The Big Sky Conference once again announced the largest television package of a Football Championship Subdivision Conference on Friday, a lineup that includes 24 of the 36 conference games.
In all, almost 40 regular-season games featuring Big Sky Conference teams will be televised in 2010.
“We’re thrilled once again to offer our fans the opportunity to view so many of our games on television,’’ said Big Sky Conference Commissioner Doug Fullerton. “Our television package is unmatched at the Football Championship Subdivision level.’’


http://www.bigskyconf.com/news/2010/8/13/FB_0813105912.aspx

[NHwildEcat]

“We are thrilled to have the largest FCS television package in the country for the fourth-straight year,” Yeager said.




http://www.bigskyconf.com/news/2010/8/13/FB_0813105912.aspx

OK? How many times do you guys need to post the same article about your claim to the largest TV package in FCS. May this factor over whose is bigger come down to $$$ and not merely just games on TV? I don't know the details, nor do I really care. I just care that between attending home games and watching games on TV I will only miss one game and that is the October 2nd game at Maine. I am sure I can rig up something to catch that one...or I will settle for the good ol radio!

I wish UNH had their own TV network, but the costs outway they positives...and I would rather one day have a finer facility to call home then a home TV network.

[CrazyCat]

OK? How many times do you guys need to post the same article about your claim to the largest TV package in FCS. May this factor over whose is bigger come down to $$$ and not merely just games on TV? I don't know the details, nor do I really care. I just care that between attending home games and watching games on TV I will only miss one game and that is the October 2nd game at Maine. I am sure I can rig up something to catch that one...or I will settle for the good ol radio!

I wish UNH had their own TV network, but the costs outway they positives...and I would rather one day have a finer facility to call home then a home TV network.

I'm just responding to what the CAA president said with what the Big Sky president said.