After more than a year of stalled negotiations, Charter Communications came to an agreement last week to carry the Big Ten Network.
The agreement with Madison’s main cable provider came two days after Time Warner announced it would offer the network as part of its expanded basic cable package. Comcast came to an agreement with the network earlier this summer.
“People who have the network really love it,” BTN spokesperson Elizabeth Conlisk said. “We’re really pleased that Charter subscribers will be able to see it.”
Charter spokesperson John Miller said BTN will be on expanded basic cable this year, but they will “re-evaluate the best place to position the channel.”
In the Madison area, BTN currently airs on Charter expanded basic cable channel 73 and Charter HD channel 795.
“We do have the rights after this season to migrate the channel to a digital level of service,” Miller said.
Neither Charter nor Comcast will be able to move the channel to a sports package, which customers have to pay extra for, Conlisk said.
“We had always said that we believed that we belonged on basic level of service inside the eight states,” Conlisk said.
Barry Orton, University of Wisconsin professor of telecommunications, said a major hurdle in the agreement was how the channel would be offered to consumers because the cable companies wanted to carry the network on a pay-per-channel basis.
“It looks like the Big Ten Network is going to win that fight,” Orton said. “They didn’t have a choice. It was time for Charter to fish or cut bait.”
Conlisk said BTN had been in talks on and off for about 18 months with Charter, Comcast and Time Warner.
“As our world is moving into new media and digital, there are lots of elements to these deals that make things more complicated,” Conlisk said.
Conlisk said BTN has rights as a network regarding broadcasting the games, including broadband rights to air games on the Internet.
It has been widely reported that Comcast pays 70 cents per subscriber to carry the network on expanded basic level of service.
While the terms of the Charter and Time Warner agreements are not public, Orton said all expanded basic cable subscribers could be paying an additional $1 or more per month, regardless of whether they are fans.
“It’s like tomatoes. BTN tomatoes are very good when the basketball season and football season are on, but those tomatoes aren’t so good when basketball and football aren’t on,” Orton said. “But you have to take them and pay the same price.”
Orton said he thinks fans will be happy with the deal, but “people who don’t like sports are going to get screwed.”
“We will have programming on 24/7/365,” Conlisk said. “Nobody sits and watches a channel for 24 hours.”
According to Orton, Charter lost a lot of customers the last couple years to DirecTV and DISH network and would have had another difficult year if they didn’t come to an agreement.
Last year, BTN carried five UW football games and will carry the first two games of the 2008 season against Akron and Marshall. The Sept. 13 game at Fresno State will air on ESPN2.
While the broadcast schedule for the remaining games has not been determined, it is likely the games against Ohio State and Penn State will be carried by ABC or ESPN, but not BTN.
