Actually, we're ahead of schedule. We've done a pretty good job having DirecTV right out of the gate. |
Can they survive as a business? I don't know. That's not for me to say. From a product standpoint, meaning how many games are there and how many events are there to fill up your day, certainly I think there's enough to go around. I like our chances, but I can't really say for them. |
From a general sense, there's certainly more than enough product out there for more than one network to be in this space. I hesitate to call it a niche, because it's way beyond a niche. |
I feel like there's a really deep and rabid fan base there that would take as much TV content as we'd give them on the subject. We knew National Signing Day was going to be a national holiday for ESPNU. |
In the case of Duke, we've met with student government, with the Line Monitors and with facilities people because what we're doing from a technical and hardware perspective is way beyond what we normally ask for. |
Our job is to put on the best possible service and make it available through cable to fans. We don't want to leverage fans into doing our work for us. The flip side to the pawn argument ... [is] if it wasn't for ESPNU, this game wouldn't be on television. |
That kind of technique, which was used a lot during the early days of ESPN2, really didn't work the way we hoped. |
This game, I know it was important to the conference to get these two schools to be a part of it. We're fine with the game. This was done last August. There is no way of knowing (how the teams are going to do) unless it's a Gonzaga or a Nevada that you can tell with any certainty. It's always a bit of a guess. |
We are thrilled to be able to revive coverage of Midnight Madness as a television franchise in partnership with five of the most successful college basketball programs in the country. Midnight Madness has long been a staple in the college basketball community, and we are excited that we can share this great tradition with a national audience. |
We do want people to lobby their local cable operators. It's still a time-tested method of influencing them. |
We don't own the syndication rights to the ACC. |
When we sit down and put it together, obviously we're hoping for significant games that impact conference titles and national rankings. But we do that with the understanding, particularly with Mountain time zone teams, that we spread it around so it's not an undue burden. |