If you ever fall off the Sears Tower...

Very cool that we’ll get to check this out. Urgings from Rick aside, the LHN won’t get picked up by any major carriers until ESPN forces it down DirecTV’s throat (no Sandusky) as part of their overall carriage renewal – then we’ll see movement from the other carriers.

I’m not going to mess with evaluating something I’m not going to have access to afterward. It’s pointless. I can bitch at my cable company all I want, but they aren’t going to give in anytime soon now that the football games are done.

I’m a scientist not a marketing guy so I’m no genius about this stuff, but my opinion is they/we (ESPN, UT, whoever) is taking the wrong approach to this. Seems to me what you do is first give the product out pretty cheaply to get the cable companies on board. You get the viewership up and get people hooked. Then you raise the rates to where you want them and you have the cable companies backed into more of a corner.

It just seems wrong to me to expect to get a massive outcry of desirous potential customers beating on the cable companies to get a product they’ve never had is unrealistic. I understand that’s part of the intent of this free internet thingy, but in my opinion 1 weekend on the internet isn’t going to hook a huge base of customers.

Really Nunna? If ESPN chose to just show Texas coverage for an entire weekend, you’d pass on watching it because you know the weekend will end?

‘cause that’s what is happening.

I will chime in to give props for long forgotten Jack Handy Deep Thoughts. Pretty good stuff and haven’t read any in a decade or so. Still classic.

FYI, the Sears Tower is now officially Willis Tower, and these day in Chicago we refer to it as “Big Willy”.

My Dad worked in the Tower and it was cool looking out his office window down at the clouds. The swaying and groans was a bit unsettling at times for me.

I feel your pain, Nunna, and I’d like to say I’ll ignore it out of principle. But I try to be consistently honest, and I’m eager to see what all the fuss has been about.

That said, you’re right, and with all due respect to Sailor, I think it’s been a boondoggle from Day 1. I’m not saying it can’t work out eventually, but the angst that it’s caused has not been worth the product to date. Here’s hoping that changes.

Hook ’Em!

I pick up the Longhorn Network on my tin foil hat. It sounds like my inner voice, only a lot more butch.

It is too bad that the football games on LHN have passed. It think that pretty much has passed the opportunity this year any big new cable companies will pick up the station. I hope the negotiations go well, but with the hardball that ESPN is playing, and the money they are demanding, I don’t see it happening anytime soon. And today is the perfect day to exemplify it.

Today is the first day this year that Thursday night NFL game start. And while right now just about everyone has NFL Network, when they started in 2003 and bigger, when they first started carrying games in 2006, few networks carried NFL Network. And there was a long drawn out 2 year battle from 2006 to 2007 to get NFL Network on carriers. And the carriers didn’t budge. And that was the NFL.

If the biggest sports league in our country can’t make this happen, when they move the needle so greatly, what chance to LHN have? Unless I make a switch in providers, I don’t see LHN in the near future.

Nunna,

I like your approach to a rollout plan much better than ESPN’s. Less hassle, same end results. Hook people on the product, raise rates, and people will likely pay the increase to keep their addiction. It works for coffee chains, tobacco companies, and I’d assume drug dealers. ESPN’s method may take much longer to take hold with providers nationwide as well. Still, I doubt they’ll deviate from their course.

Who thinks ESPN didn’t account for the pirated streams over the interwebs of the two football games?? I certainly do. I can only imagine it put a kink in their negotiations. And, honestly, I don’t feel one bit sorry for them.

The problem with the roll it out on the cheap approach, in the cable business specifically, is that eyeballs on the LHN aren’t what pays, it’s getting the subscription numbers.

If ESPN gives it out at $0.10 per subscriber up front year 1, then raises it to $0.40 year 2 or 3, TWC, Direct TV, etc. will pull it then and we are in the same place. They’ll get the same amount of calls demanding the channel, but still aren’t going to back down. ESPN has budgeted for this in more ways than one, I am sure. It probably makes more sense for ESPN to hold the hardline then to come down to the range TWC and Direct TV are asking for right now. We are still getting our check.

I have Grande (which also carries NFL-N). The LHN is pretty cool. I’m not sure what they’ll put on this weekend in addition to the BB game, but I’ve seen LHN’s version of Hard Knocks, which is a lot of fun, Longhorn news every morning as I drink my coffee, fall baseball on TV, classic games, etc. It’s great.

Testing the netcast waters. Thought they might do this, once the cablecast football games were done. I think I woulda put together a little test on justin.tv and gathered some demographics on viewers… for all I know, they did, and still are. The honey pot is a powerfool tool. I’ve noticed on several games this fall that the streamers had a better picture than ESPN3 in some games where it was possible to go back and forth between the “official” ESPN3 version and a justin.tv one. Some of the ESPN3 ‘casts were almost unwatchable video while a streamer had a perfect picture. I hope these ESPN fuckers are figuring it out and getting closer to a "Hey, if you liked what you saw, how’s about signing up for $x.99 a month for full access all the time… including replays and classics…" (reaches for wallet)

A-Tex Devil said: “If ESPN gives it out at $0.10 per subscriber up front year 1, then raises it to $0.40 year 2 or 3, TWC, Direct TV, etc. will pull it then and we are in the same place. They’ll get the same amount of calls demanding the channel, but still aren’t going to back down.”

A-Tex – I would disagree with the part in bold. Right now people don’t know what they’re missing and aren’t hooked on it to miss it. As such I doubt the cable companies are being deluged with UT fans demanding LHN (except perhaps for the two football games). I don’t believe a couple days internet streaming is going to make much difference in this regard either.

However, once people have had it for a year or two they’ve established viewing habits and and identified content they like and don’t want to be without. If the cable companies play hardball and pull the plug at that point, then they do gets hordes of angry calls from people complaining about missing things they’re used to seeing.

I remember waking up on New Year’s Day of 2000 and finding out I wasn’t going to see the UT/Arky Cotton Bowl because Fox and the cable company (Time Warner I think) were at an impasse in negotiations. Time Warner got a shitload of angry calls about that and things got settled damn quick after that. You deny people something they’ve never had and they may be somewhat desirous of it. You deny people something they’ve gotten used to having and they get damn pissed.

But what do I know. I’m not a marketing guy and I’m sure ESPN has boatloads of people smarter than me on this. I’m sure the massive revenue they’re getting from Verizon and the one other carrier they may have more than makes up for the revenue they’d get from having it on every cable and satellite carrier for 1/3 that cost.

Maybe someone who kept up with this kind of stuff can say for sure, but back when ESPN was first getting started I don’t think they went to the cable companies with a huge price demand and refused to give in. At that point ESPN was something no one had ever had and the cable companies had no pressure to give in. I’m sure ESPN got started by offering at a fairly low rate to establish an audience and then raised rates over time as their leverage increased from viewership.

That’s been ESPN’s model with all of their channels, though, and it’s worked well for them. I concede that the LHN is a different beast due to its narrower focus and different business model. But it took ESPN 2-3 years to hammer all of its sister channels through from the Deuce to Deportivo to Classic, and I guess this one won’t be any different other than that we are all directly affected by it.

If it takes them as long to get this done, but they are eventually successful and UT continues to get paid, than I think things still pretty much would have gone according to plan.

Plus - I think this weekend is really the future anyway — access on-line. The carriers, eventually, won’t matter as much.

I’d bet that the sports/hoops vacuum created by the NBA lockout will have any of these providers scrambling for more college games. My hope is that this gives UT/ESPN a little more leverage for the basketball games.

If not, then I plan to switch to Grande.

I know Halloween’s over but whenever I see something screech across the room and latch onto someone’s neck and he screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what is that thing?

I heard part of a discussion about how MTV originally got on the cable lineups back in the day on NPR recently. Apprently they were not getting anywhere and were still not available in New York a year after the channel launched. They ended up getting some famous musicians to do commercials telling people to call their cable companies and the cable companies finally folded.

Time Warner needs to stop being so stubborn and just bend over and take it (no sandusky)

My 2 cents: too early for Sandusky references to be funny.

LHN: We don’t show gladiator movies."

My 2 cents: it will always be too early for Sandusky references to be funny.

Eventually their other channels will come up for negotiations with each carrier and then they’ll force them to carry LHN as well as part of the bundle.

“You don’t want LHN and you didn’t get enough calls from Longhorn fans? Well how about now you don’t have ESPN or ESPN2 and see how many calls you get.”

Don’t know the timing on this, but it’ll happen. The only thing that would make it happen faster would be enough calls (which they apparently didn’t get) or enough switching to the few companies that do have it (not much of an option here in Houston).

And yes, it is now the Willis Tower.

The big providers are trying to figure out how to charge a la carte for channels like LHN. When that happens, they’ll pick us up.

It takes a big man to cry, and an even bigger man to laugh at him.

After having watched LHN for only 10 minutes, I already regret not having attended any women’s soccer games during my time on the 40 acres. Talent with a capital T! And they’re pretty good at soccer too.

I have Time Warner Cable – still no NFL Network. It’s been, what, 8 years. I don’t really care as I don’t care much about the NFL, but TWC can be hardliners.

I know it’s only a teaser, but I’m watching the hell out of the LHN this weekend. Since I will never get it on cable or sat TV, this may be the first and last time I will see it.

Maybe ESPN will figure out a way to allow those of us outside the US to watch all their channels online, since we could not be getting them with cable providers.

I’ve requested LHN. However, being in PA, I doubt it’s high on my cable provider’s priorities