Big Ten Network Chief Says BTN Anxious for Deal with Time Warner
By John Porentas
Big Ten Network President Mark Silverman was in Columbus on Tuesday doing a little PR work.
Ohio is the state in the Big Ten footprint with the least penetration by the Big Ten network, primarily due to the lack of an agreement with cable provider Time Warner. Silverman met with OSU Department of Athletic officials to update them on the status of the negotiations with Time Warner and also took to the airwaves on local radio and television outlets to get his side of the story out.
"I want fans to know that right now we have a long way to go," said Silverman in an exclusive the-Ozone interview.
"We need to make progress, significant progress, in a short amount of time in order to get a deal of this scope done in the next two and half weeks."
The two and a half weeks to which Silverman alluded is the time remaining before the opening kickoff of the football season. The problem facing the parties involved is that an 11th-hour agreement would not leave enough time to dot the i's, cross the t's and get all the ducks in a row that need to be in a row to get the network distributed.
"It's not a long period of time when you don't have a deal done to get from where we are now, to go from an agreement in principle and then to get it legalized and a legal agreement all done before kickoff and have time to send out all the receivers so that they can get the signal and put it on the air, not to mention figure out overflow channels and all that other stuff. There's just a lot to get done and we need to make a lot of progress in a very short period time," said Silverman.
Due to the lack of an agreement with Time Warner distribution of the Big Ten Network in Ohio has lagged behind that of the other Big Ten states.
"It (BTN distribution) varies from (a low of) about 40 percent here and in Wisconsin, Time Warner is major provider in Wisconsin as well," said Silverman.
Continued