BTN still facing year-end shutout at Comcast

The Big Ten Network is staring in the face of a shutout as the clock runs out on its first calendar year with it still seeking carriage agreements with four major regional cable companies, including Comcast, the largest cable TV carrier in the Chicago area.

"Frankly, it's definitely a mixed bag," BTN president Mark Silverman admitted on a football-season-in-review media conference call Tuesday. "Obviously, we've got some distribution holes we have to fill up."

The BTN claimed to set a record by adding 30 million subscribers in its first 30 days, including agreements with satellite firms DirecTV and the Dish Network. But that's where things stagnated.

"We are in talks currently with Comcast and Mediacom and Charter," Silverman said. "We are still far apart on those deals. They are not looking likely that they'll be done this year, but we are talking."

Worse, the BTN has not even had negotiations with Time Warner in "several months," Silverman said. That deal is going nowhere.

The main sticking point remains the BTN's refusal to be part of a sports-tier package at an extra cost, even as it reportedly is asking cable and satellite firms to pay about a dollar a month a subscriber. "We are still seeking expanded basic coverage in our deals," Silverman said.

"We're really looking at the next two to three weeks, I think, being the critical point," he added. "I think we're really looking at mid-December as being a crucial time to get, if not deals done, (then) getting very, very close by then in order to have the season saved."

Silverman was referring to the Big Ten basketball season, with the BTN scheduled to run 140 games after presenting 41 football games this fall. Many of the top games will of course be covered on the major broadcast networks and ESPN, but Comcast subscribers will be held hostage where the BTN games are concerned unless a deal gets done.

"We're talking with Comcast," Silverman insisted, "but we still have a ways to go. There still needs to be some significant movement to be able to get something done any time soon."

The similarly placed NFL Network has led legislative efforts in Illinois and elsewhere to pass laws citing cable companies like Comcast as having a conflict of interest with ownership of their own channels, such as Comcast SportsNet Chicago, and thus forcing carriage talks into arbitration.

"We are following that," Silverman said, but "we are looking to resolve this via negotiation with the cable companies. We're not seeking political intervention."