I have had my issues with Larry Scott in the past but I have to admit that Scott is visionary.
A day after implying during an interview at the conference's annual media day in L.A. that an announcement about a Pacific-12 Network was still a ways off, commissioner Larry Scott told a New York press conference at an East Coast media day that it's all been pulled together.
A deal that the conference calls "innovative" and "transformative" in its press release, the Pac-12 Network will begin in August, 2012 as a two-pronged entity -- one nationally distributed, and six regional networks in Southern California, Northern California, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, and the Mountain regions that are directly linked with Time Warner, Comcast, Cox Communications and Bright House Networks.
The Pac-12 would own the channels as Pac-12 Media Enterprises, which would also expand to wireless services.
The landscape is changing faster than anyone can keep up.
Scott took the road of content and not profits.
He gets major kudos for that.
The other thing is that the money the schools will earn on this will come later, but I suspect that Scott won't let the conference go hungry. I am ready to shell out the funds right now. The less I have to give ESPN in the form of ESPN GamePlan the better.
Of course it wasn't all good news...
I was the one that asked the lone question about DirecTV. I suspect Larry Scott saw my question as throwing cold water on this great announcement. But DirecTV has thousands and thousands of customers and those customers don't want to be left behind as the Pac-12 leaps ahead in the college sports landscape.
Wilner has some further details...
Thoughts and info …
* The four cable partners (TWC, Cox, Comcast and Bright House) are in approx 45 million homes nationally.
General breakdown: Bright House: 2 million, Cox: 6 million, TWC: 14 million, Comcast 23 million.
If you don’t have one of those four operators, hang tight: The league has some negotiating to do.
That includes fans inside and outside the league’s footprint.
But owning the rights to three football games per week gives the conference leverage with cable and satellite operators.
That’s the reason behind the stockpile of football inventory.
Scott really pulled this one together...I wonder what else he has up his sleeve?
On a side note listen to Scott's interview on the Scott VanPelt Show. He said some very interesting things about USC.
He knows he couldn't get it done without 'SC...listen right about halfway through the interview. Heck he wouldn't even have taken the job without USC signing on to his plan.
Even when USC is down USC still matters.
I would expect that once the particulars are set the content will be tremendous!
On demand content will the most important to me being here on the east coast.
Looks like Scott is just getting started...