With the college football season less then a week away, its becoming an intruiging storyline of the Big Ten Network can reach distribution deals with the remaining cable companies who have yet to broker a deal with the upsttart sports network.
2 months back Comcast joined Dish, DirectTV, Verizon, ATT, and many others to carry the network with rumblings that MediaCom and Time Warner were reopening up negotiaions.
Earlier this week, Gene Smith (Oho State’s Athletic Director), made an announcement informing fans that Time Warner negotiotions had stalled and that those looking for the network should look for diffrent providers.
Smith’s email effectively painted Time Warner as the bad guy. Time Warner has struck back by proposing to allow BTN football games to be available on a pay per view basis. While Mediacom seems to have brokered a last minute deal for distribution, Charter Communication’s is still negotiating , the BTN and Time Warner saga has become a half hearted posturing and rhetoric war between the two companies.
The pay per view proposal was a half ass posturing move to paint the BTN as the bad guy (not saying they aren’t). Time Warner does not seem to be legitimately pursuing a deal and is more dragging their feet in negotiations to give the appearance to subscribers that they are pursuing a deal.
The BTN but Time Warner on blast once again.
“Time Warner is well aware that it cannot selectively choose to air a network’s programming in lieu of full carriage. In addition, offering to do so to a customer base it has effectively ignored for the past year in not carrying the network is counter-productive and creates both confusion and false hope.
“While proposals have recently been exchanged, there is a wide gap between what Time Warner and its other competitors would seem to agree is reasonable and fair. Somehow America’s top cable operator, largest telephone company and two satellite providers have each decided to make the Big Ten Network available to their customers. There are another 230 or so similar companies, serving more than 55 million homes and seven out of every 10 folks in the eight Big Ten states, that each carry the network, too.
“Time Warner has already had more than 18 months to decide to offer the Big Ten Network to its customers, and in a statement Wednesday said ‘we are ready to carry the network.’ Fine. Then they should carry the network, and at terms comparable to the network’s other agreements. Or they should tell their customers they have decided not to. Either way, fans deserve to know the truth.”
The bottom line here is that this is a war of attrition and both sides are pretty dug in. BTN has some pretty solid distribution, but covets getting Time Warner in the fold. Time Warner is poorly run company and has done some internal analysis that probably shows that the amount of money it will cost to broker a deal is more than the amount of subscribers the company will lose, especially if they continue overstating their intentions and progress to reach a deal.
The trut is that the company is slowly bleeding customers. Some because of this, some because their product is average, and a lot because their customer service and market strategy is garbage. They should take a page out of Verizon, ATT, and the satelittle companies and put am emphasis on consumer needs and wants rather than then bottom line.
