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Today’s Sports Variety on Cable TV

Posted on September 28, 2008
Filed Under Family, Genre, Horror, James Bond, Movie News, Now Playing, Romantic Comedy, Science Fiction, Uncategorized, Upcoming Releases, Video Games, box office | Leave a Comment

One of the best things about modern cable and satellite television is the explosion of sports programming now available to customers across the country. While 20 years ago you might find two college football games on Saturday and two pro games on Sunday, today you can literally pick from two dozen or more games every weekend.

The motto today is “Content is King” and as the saying goes the sports networks want to bring as much sports content as possible to the end user so they can make more money on advertising. Lots of new all-sports networks have popped up in the last few years. A few of the new networks are Altitude Sports, which carries Nuggets from Denver and Colorado Avalanche games, as well as the Big 10 network and the Mtn, the network of the Mountain West conference.

Certainly these new channels are nice for fans in certain areas, disagreements between the providers of sports programming and those who deliver the content have resulted in trouble at times to the customer. Consider what happened last year, the Big Ten Network began broadcasting in 2007, but they were unable to strike a deal with cable TV provider Time Warner. Customers of Time Warner in Michigan were unable to see some of the local teams play because of the carraige dispute. Finally however, the parties came to an agreement before the 2008 season, so customers could remain with with Time Warner instead of having to switch to one of the satellite television companies such as DISH Network or Direct TV.

Out of market sports programming are another consideration for the customer. The DirecTV Sunday Ticket package is exclusive to the satellite TV provider, so if you want this package you have to switch. This has upset some pay television customers, who do not understand why a package like this isn’t available to every provider, especially a big company like Time Warner. Alternative packages though are more fan friendly, such as the NHL out of market package and the NBA League Pass, which are available on almost every cable TV and satellite company.

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