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Big Ten Network (BTN)

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3yardsandacloud said:
Interesting read on the creation of the BTN and the ripple effect it has had on the landscape of sports and sports broadcasting:

https://awfulannouncing.com/ncaa/consider-them-rolled-jim-delany-espn-big-ten-network.html
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Great find. I love this sidebar as it explains a great deal about the open SEC bias shown by ESPN in the last 15 years at the same time that it demonstrates the consumer power of the Big 10 schools:

An amiable session in which the Big Ten and ESPN cleaned up “housekeeping matters” — schedules and announcers — took a nasty turn at the one-hour mark. That’s when talk turned to a contract extension, a negotiating session that went nowhere. Fast.

“The shortest one I ever had,” Delany told the Tribune. “He lowballed us and said: ‘Take it or leave it. If you don’t take our offer, you are rolling the dice.’ I said: ‘Consider them rolled.’ “

Delany had warned ESPN officials that without a significant rights-fee increase, he would try to launch a new channel that would pose competition both for TV viewers and the Big Ten’s inventory of games: the Big Ten Network.

“He threw his weight around,” Shapiro said in a telephone interview, “and said, ‘I’m going to get my big (rights-fee) increase and start my own network.’ Had ESPN stepped up and paid BCS-type dollars, I think we could have prevented the network. In retrospect, that might have been the right thing to do. Jim is making a nice penny on that.”

Said Delany: “If Mark had presented a fair offer, we would have signed it. And there would not be a Big Ten Network.”

Also paints an interesting picture of Mark Shapiro, an elitist prick in a crowd of elitist pricks. Dropping the big bucks on Wimbledon and trying to lowball Big Ten Football suggests that his thinking runs along the "all my cool east coast friends follow tennis and who gives a shit about a bunch of pumpkin shuckers in fly-over country?" Not satisfied with that, he goes on to piss off the NFL, NBA, and MLB brass. Perfect guy to put in charge of a sports network.
 
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cincibuck said:
Not satisfied with that, he goes on to piss off the NFL, NBA, and MLB brass. Perfect guy to put in charge of a sports network.
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I'd like to learn more about how he pissed of the NFL, NBA, and MLB. I'd never heard that.

LovelandBuckeye said:
WTF is Shapiro doing these days? What an improperly used dildo he is.
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Umm... I was unaware that there were improper ways to use a dildo..
 
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Zurp said:
I'd like to learn more about how he pissed of the NFL, NBA, and MLB. I'd never heard that.
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This is in the article:

Fred Gaudelli, executive producer of NBC’s NFL coverage

“When Mark came in, he brought an arrogance. His regime or style, however you want to put it, was basically the turning point for ESPN going from the good guy to the arrogant guy. I don’t care what they tell you, ESPN is not well liked at 280 Park (NFL headquarters], they are not well liked at the NBA, and they are not well liked at Major League Baseball. So you saw it in their relationships with partners, and you saw it on the air with the way they over-promoted the stupidest things, like the Bobby Knight movie. And that’s what Mark brought into the company.”

“Mark Shapiro ran a dictatorship, and ESPN still suffers from it today.”

Barry Melrose, ESPN NHL analyst

“Shapiro and Bettman came to hate each other. And Gary is a lawyer and a tough negotiator, and I think he felt that ESPN was trying to take advantage of the NHL and lowball them with the price.”
 
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ScriptOhio said:
This is in the article:

Fred Gaudelli, executive producer of NBC’s NFL coverage

“When Mark came in, he brought an arrogance. His regime or style, however you want to put it, was basically the turning point for ESPN going from the good guy to the arrogant guy. I don’t care what they tell you, ESPN is not well liked at 280 Park (NFL headquarters], they are not well liked at the NBA, and they are not well liked at Major League Baseball. So you saw it in their relationships with partners, and you saw it on the air with the way they over-promoted the stupidest things, like the Bobby Knight movie. And that’s what Mark brought into the company.”

“Mark Shapiro ran a dictatorship, and ESPN still suffers from it today.”

Barry Melrose, ESPN NHL analyst

“Shapiro and Bettman came to hate each other. And Gary is a lawyer and a tough negotiator, and I think he felt that ESPN was trying to take advantage of the NHL and lowball them with the price.”
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Just seems like he came in with a number and was never going to adjust because he saw ESPN as the only opportunity in town. Oopsie daisy!
 
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LovelandBuckeye said:
Just seems like he came in with a number and was never going to adjust because he saw ESPN as the only opportunity in town. Oopsie daisy!
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He also came in with "cheap tricks and gimmicks" instead of overpaying the market price for live sports -

I'll give him this, he may have been thinking that today's kids aren't going to sit and watch sports live. TV slows the game down, and kids are impatient. I've seen some research that suggests they're not going to games or watching them at anywhere near the rate of the older generations. I'm guilty too. I tivo the Bucks. I don't start the recording until an hour after the game starts, then zip through the commercials and usually catch up for the last half-hour live.

I remember Woody going off about the forced timeouts so TV could sell stuff. "You get a turnover and you want to get your offense out there and hit 'em before they're ready, and the guy in the red hat holds the game up so TV can get a commercial in."

Shapiro wanted studio shows - cheap to televise, no need for the expense of a remote studio, get some stacked MILFs to sit/stand around and look interested while blowhards like Stephen A and Terry Bradshaw go off yelling and screaming and you can fit them into your 24/7 wherever you need them.
 
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LovelandBuckeye said:
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- Penalties destroy drive momentum, very consistently. They also give opponents 2nd chances that frequently lead to points.
Would be interesting to analyze likelihood of scoring / defending a score when offense / defense penalties are involved. My years of watching, I think it's not far removed from turnovers.
Franklin might be a moron.

- ToP is harder. In a retrospect, it often shows who controlled the game. At halftime, not so much.
Seems to me, that control aspect often doesn't reveal itself until midway through the 3rd Q.
In that sense, I could see why a coach doesn't care. They probably only see that number at halftime.
ToP as a predictor for who is winning can be questionable, but it's very revealing in context of other stats like rushing vs passing yards, first downs, etc.

- Agree on total yardage.
 
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kujirakira said:
- Penalties destroy drive momentum, very consistently. They also give opponents 2nd chances that frequently lead to points.
Would be interesting to analyze likelihood of scoring / defending a score when offense / defense penalties are involved. My years of watching, I think it's not far removed from turnovers.
Franklin might be a moron.

- ToP is harder. In a retrospect, it often shows who controlled the game. At halftime, not so much.
Seems to me, that control aspect often doesn't reveal itself until midway through the 3rd Q.
In that sense, I could see why a coach doesn't care. They probably only see that number at halftime.
ToP as a predictor for who is winning can be questionable, but it's very revealing in context of other stats like rushing vs passing yards, first downs, etc.

- Agree on total yardage.
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I don't remember the year, but Wisconsin won ToP with something like 40:00. The Bucks won the game by 20+ points. One team had long drives and came up empty, one team ran 3-4 plays and scored. Yes, I know. That was an anomaly.
 
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Did in fact look for something like this, but could not find. Please move if I missed.
OK, Looking forward to the B10 studio crew visiting the B10 schools with an hour or so vignette on how the teams are looking. Realize I'm a bit early, as fall practices are a month or so away, but.....Does anyone know when (or if) they will be scheduled, etc? Realize that with the four new additions, it will take a bit more to happen, but so enjoy listening to the plusses and minuses (or in the Buckeye's case, just the plusses). DiNardo knows his stuff, as do the others, and reviewing with the HC is always a treat. Hopefully one of you guys has some info. Go Bucks!
 
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calibuck said:
Did in fact look for something like this, but could not find. Please move if I missed.
OK, Looking forward to the B10 studio crew visiting the B10 schools with an hour or so vignette on how the teams are looking. Realize I'm a bit early, as fall practices are a month or so away, but.....Does anyone know when (or if) they will be scheduled, etc? Realize that with the four new additions, it will take a bit more to happen, but so enjoy listening to the plusses and minuses (or in the Buckeye's case, just the plusses). DiNardo knows his stuff, as do the others, and reviewing with the HC is always a treat. Hopefully one of you guys has some info. Go Bucks!
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Judging by the dates that appear on the hits from a web-search, it looks like the tour usually occurs in early August.

Over the past few years the network seems to have made a conscious decisions to eschew ratings in lieu of providing more coverage of stuff that people don't really care about. I'm sure they would use different words to describe what they're doing, but the words that I used are 100% accurate, whether they like them or not. The point here is that there used to be stuff on BTN that I would watch or record several times a week, any time of year; now it is 100% garbage about which I could not care less for the vast majority of the year. I missed the beginning of the fall camp tour last year because I had gotten out of the habit of even checking what was on BTN.

The elitists in charge may think that their choices are "more fair" than leaving programming decisions to anything as gauche as "market forces". They remain at perfect liberty to do whatever they like for as long as the market will bear it, or until the athletes who are bringing them most of their revenue decide that their interests are not being served by BTN's programming choices and they begin to exercise the influence that they are only now just beginning to realize that they have.
 
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Thanks DaddyBB, was thinking the same thing, but glad to see thoughts confirmed. Will add to your comments, in that when the 'fall tour' goes on B10, it will NOT have 'Fall Tour- OSU' or somesuch, but just Fall Tour. Doesn't help we poor folk on the other end of the TV much at all. I agree that they're trying for fairness, which will only become more diluted now that the B10 has grown by four. On my TV at least, there's two other channels blocked out for B10 football games, so how about they add one or more camera crews to travel to other venues and capture two different sets of teams to plug on their channels? Know that it's expensive, but if they're paying a billion for the rights, then use 'em, huh? With an apology to the other members of the league, don't really hurry to watch a replay of X versus Y teams, unless it's our beloved Buckeyes. Maybe Texas had it right all along....maybe we need a Buckeye channel, and share rights with the B10. Betcha the ratings would be higher....if the Buckeye fan base all have TV sets. Go Bucks!
 
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