Cougar Corner Blog
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Answers about the MTN
Someone's finally done it, setup a "Fire Craig Thompson" website.
Craig Thompson has been running the MWC for the last several years. He's had some problems along the way, including his inability to contract with quality bowls and of course the MTN debacle.
It's a real tough situation, because our deal with CSTV seemed like such a great deal. A channel, available nationally, that would carry BYU and MWC games. Not only that, we'd be making double what our last contract with ESPN got. Most people were pretty enthusiastic, even after a terrible production at the Stanford game for CSTV's maiden launch.
Then word leaked out about CSTV spinning the MWC off onto a newly created subchannel, the MTN, and selling half it's interest to Comcast. Now, this great national channel, CSTV plays exciting high school games and Jr. High flag football extravaganza while MWC games are held hostage on the MTN.
Whats wrong with the MTN? We're still getting a lot more money, and ESPN was trying to lowball the MWC with a weak offer that included slashed money and the requirement of playing on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. All that is true, ESPN was trying to pull a fast one over on the MWC because they were the only game in town. But the problem with the MTN is that it's not available. Comcast has the channel, in a few of their markets (Utah) but not nationally. Not even regionally. If Comcast doesn't even have enough faith to put their own channel on their systems nationwide why would any other cable or satellite provider? They haven't, and they wont. Not anytime soon.
So half the people in Utah can watch the games, but no one else. This will hurt recruiting, game attendance, # of fans, and more. BYU, as leader of the conference, needs to make something happen. If we can, then we will all benefit from a very unique product. But until that time the MTN goes on in obscurity.
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