Dec. 21, 2004

The Nova Notebook, by Villanova director of media relations Mike Sheridan, appears each week beginning in the fall and continues through the basketball season. This holiday edition looks at the elements of the television scheduling puzzle at Villanova.

It was the marriage that helped drive college basketball to new heights in the 1980s and 1990s.

When cable television discovered college basketball, everything changed. Local rivalries suddenly became national ones. Universities located in major markets became household names in places far removed from their respective campuses. Most winter nights were filled with a seemingly endless variety of viewing choices for the college hoops aficionado.

It was hoops heaven and Villanova had a front row seat. In tandem with its partners in the Big East and lifted by an improbable NCAA title in 1985, the `Cats became regular household visitors in their region and across America. It was a pace that continued uninterrupted through the 1990s.

Now, nearing the mid-point of the first decade of the 21st century, subtle changes have shifted the broadcasting landscape. Contests that were once assumed to be on television are no longer guaranteed to be so. There is perhaps no clearer sign of the times than the fact that games which one defined the Big East, Georgetown vs. Villanova and St. John's vs. Georgetown, will not be aired on television in 2004-05.

"The marketplace has undergone some changes," states Villanova senior associate athletics director Bob Steitz, who worked extensively in assembling the Atlantic Ten's football and basketball television packages before coming to the Main Line in 2002. "It's changed mostly due to the saturation of games now available. Entities are now being more selective about which games they will produce than they were in the past."

In the 1980s, a host of local and regional networks produced college basketball games. Today, the power is more consolidated among those at the top of the industry.

CBS has owned the rights to the NCAA Tournament since 1982. Its contract with the Big East gives it the right of first refusal on any conference game and it often works with officials at the Big East office to create appealing intersectional matchups.

ESPN and Fox Sports Net also have a strong presence in college basketball. Through its contract with the Big East, ESPN owns the rights to all games involving conference institutions that CBS does not air. Fox Sports Net has similar deals with the Atlantic Coast Conference and Pac Ten to air games nationally. FSN also is a factor on the regional front, airing games of local interest on its systems across the country.

All three have invested considerably in college basketball and between them produce literally hundreds of telecasts.

Yet, in some respects, it's harder now to get games on the air, especially in marketplaces where professional sports create a crowded inventory. And if the games aren't aired locally, that means they generally aren't available to be included in ESPN's Full Court package, whereby displaced fans can watch their favorite team via satellite.

Since the halcyon days for college basketball viewers in the late 1980s, ESPN has added the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League to its inventory. (Although the NHL is currently in the midst of a work stoppage, ESPN is still obligated to hold programming slots in its lineup until notified by the league that it can release them.) Fox Sports Net relies on a collection of regional networks with multiple local professional team deals.

There are other factors too. The NFL playoffs - and the ancillary programming that accompanies them - now dominate more weekend slots in January than they did in the 1980s. There are now more NHL and NBA franchises than existed then and each of those grabs valuable regional and local time slots. (Some of those franchises are owned by the same conglomerate that owns the cable network.) And ratings for college basketball as a whole have declined since the early 1990s.

In short, the rules of the broadcast game are considerably different than they were in the past, even for a league like the Big East, which has one of the most prestigious television contracts in the country.

Consider that in 1999-2000, a total of 153 games were televised involving 13 Big East schools. Those include national, regional, and local appearances.

In 2004-05, the total for 12 Big East schools is 132 televised games.

As is the case with most major alliances, television rights in the Big East are owned by the league. They are then sold to a broadcast entity, in this case ESPN, which chooses some matchups for its own networks and ABC, and then assigns the rest to its wholly owned subsidiary, ESPN Regional Television. In the current contract, ESPN owns the rights to all Villanova home games and Big East road games.

Once ESPN determines which games it wants on ABC, ESPN and ESPN 2, the remaining games are offered by ESPN Regional Television to local and regional outlets. In some cases those are over the air stations and in some instances they are cable outfits. In circumstances where the game is not picked up by a television entity, the rights remain with ESPN.

Another subtle shift in recent years comes into play here too. Two decades ago many local stations not aligned with ABC, CBS or NBC were independently owned and operated, often by local interests which liked the idea of programming with a hometown feel to it. Today, most of those same stations are now affiliates of Fox, UPN or the WB, networks with national programming to fill evening slots. In many instances the only vacancies now open for basketball telecasts are on Saturday or Sunday afternoons.

It is prudent to note that in the 1960s , 70s, and `80s, many of the Philadelphia Big Five telecasts that captured the interest of the city were aired on WPHL (Channel 17) in the evening, an option that is simply not available now.

The most viable alternative option in most markets then tends to be regional sports networks. In the Philadelphia market, that translates into Comcast Sports Net and CN8, both owned by Comcast.

But another market adjustment impacts Villanova here. Over the past few years, Comcast has been engaged in an expansion mode and has added a series of cable sports networks across the country. It is no longer just a distributor in many cases but is offering its own programming that often places it in direct competition with ESPN. Issues such as branding - whose logo appears on the screen and whose announcers call the game - that once were not a factor, are now items that must be negotiated.

"We tend to play the role of mediator," states Steitz. "We have spent many hours working with Tom Odjakjian of the Big East to bring the parties together. Tom and I have had countless conversations about ways we can work to help bring more Villanova games to the air."

Another element of the equation here is that Villanova is one of six Division I institutions in its own market. The Philadelphia based sports network can choose from college basketball alternatives that do not exist in many other major metropolitan areas to augment its professional sports inventory. In addition, there are often no rights fees to produce those telecasts, unlike in the packages of high-profile leagues such as the Big East.

"As the rightsholder, ESPN believes this product has value and ESPN has paid for that," states Steitz. "It has the right to try to recoup that value."

A package of Villanova games was offered to CSN this year and the network elected to take a pass. In conjunction with Villanova and the Big East, ESPN Regional offered a two-game package, featuring the dates with Temple (Dec. 4) and University of Pennsylvania (Dec. 31), to Comcast Sports Net. No agreement was reached and neither game will be produced for television.

No Villanova games are scheduled to air on CSN in 2004-05, though the network does carry "Inside Villanova Basketball with Jay Wright" and selected women's basketball contests. VU appeared once on CN8 in a Dec. 11 win over La Salle (the rights to that belonged to the Atlantic Ten Conference as it was the Explorers' home game.) WPHL (WB 17 in Philadelphia) and WFMZ (Channel 69, available on most local cable systems) will carry a total of eight games in January and February while ESPN airs one and ESPN2 two others. ABC will broadcast the Feb. 20 game against Pittsburgh at the Pavilion while ESPN and ESPN2 handle all Big East Tournament games. This year is also unique in that Villanova does not appear in a pre-season tournament, such as the Great Alaska Shootout or Maui Invitational, which provide additional national television opportunities.

"Exposure for our men's basketball program is at the top of our priority list," says Steitz. "We have explored a variety of options to address this and are pleased that we have partnerships in place with ESPN, WPHL and WFMZ that will allow our fans to see the most meaningful games we play in January and February."

As for the future, Steitz sees reason to hope that the partnerships with the local sports networks can grow.

"I am more optimistic about the tone of the negotiations between ESPN and Comcast now than I was last year," he stated. "At that point we were bogged down by global issues related to Disney (which owns ESPN) and Comcast. College basketball was a small blip on the radar. Now, though, a dialogue has been established and we are down to the important issues. The negotiations this year were very courteous and professional. It was a situation where we simply ran out of time."