A rather glaring omission
Horned over: Will the Longhorn Network be shown everywhere but Houston?
As fans and sports columnists gnash their teeth, the Longhorn Network (aka ESPN) has been working late hours trying to get its network distributed not just in Austin but nationwide before the switch is flipped on Friday morning. Today, the buzz is decidedly on the side of getting something done, and several sources tell CultureMap the Time Warner Cable deal is down to the "nitty gritty" details.
Deals with Comcast (Houston's main cable provider) or DirecTV are not close, according to those sources. With Time Warner Cable, the hard work is done. Which is good news for UT fans in Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio or Austin (all cities where Time Warner is the clear No. 1 carrier). But not so good news for Houston, where it has little presence.
University of Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds looked on the greater Texas bright side in a press conference announcing an unrelated partnership with St. David's hospital on Tuesday.
"You might have heard we will launch the Longhorn Network Friday morning," he said in Austin, "and it looks like it will be available to you. We have great news coming, but we can't announce anything yet."
Multiply that by $4.80 and you get close to $10 million from just one provider in the state. That's real money — and you wonder why your cable bill keeps going up?
Word is that announcement will happen Thursday.
The Sports Business Journal previously reported that several deals with small cable outlets have already been inked and deals with Verizon and Grande in San Marcos (covering part of the Austin area) are very close.
No one should be surprised at how long this has taken. These nationwide deals are enormously complicated (and this is a nationwide deal) and when two goliaths like Time Warner Cable and ESPN/ABC disagree, often it's the viewer that gets lost in the fog of self-interest.
This negotiation is happening among the biggest of big-wigs in New York not Austin. Most often deals like these are struck as the clock ticks down. That's just the nature of the modern cable TV business.
And it is big business. Reports suggest ESPN asked cable systems to pay 40 cents per subscriber per month for the Longhorn Network to be carried on expanded basic cable in Texas (that means nearly everyone gets it, no one pays extra for it). Do a little math here — that's $4.80 per year per subscriber. Time Warner Cable, the state's largest cable provider serves around two million expanded basic subscribers in Texas.
Multiply that by $4.80 and you get close to $10 million from just one provider in the state. That's real money — and you wonder why your cable bill keeps going up?
Beyond the dollars, discussions involve what channel to assign to the network, whether to include it in a sports package (where only sports enthusiasts pay for it) or basic cable and what other channels are involved (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, ESPNEWS, Disney and ABC Family are all related).
Speaking to representatives on all sides, I can tell you there is no one involved who wants to face the ire of a multitude of Longhorn fans descending from the stands at Darrell K Royal Stadium smelling blood in the water. Not getting it done would be a public relations disaster for everyone, including the Longhorn Network.
DirecTV customers however may be out of luck, which would be another blow to Houston since getting DirecTV is one way to get around Comcast. ESPN's contract with DirecTV ends this year and reports suggest ESPN has no interest in negotiating the Longhorn Network until then. Enjoy your NFL Sunday Ticket folks.
